Rich
Do you think in light of your thoughts on low amino acid status, that it would be useful to supplement them?
Hi, aquarius, Annesse, and the group.
For PWMEs who are low in amino acids, I do think that taking a free-form amino acids supplement can give benefit in the short term. However, in the longer term, I would favor addressing what I believe are the causes of low amino acids in ME/CFS, i.e. the methylation cycle block and the dysfunction of the digestive system. As many of you are aware, Dr. Kenny de Meirleir has been focusing on the gut issues for many years, and he believes that issues in the gut and the immune system (which is mostly in the gut) are fundamental in ME/CFS. I'm warming up to the possibility that sauerkraut could help with the the digestive system aspects. Here's why:
First, we know from the baking soda--burp test on many PWMEs that most are low in stomach acid (I think because of low glutathione in the parietal cells that normally produce the acid), and sauerkraut is acidic because of the lactic acid and acetic acid produced by the lactic acid bacteria that are used to make it. Thus, taking sauerkraut might bring all the benefits I have described in the past that result from having stomach acid, which various people have increased using betaine-HCl, Allergy Research Group dilute hydrochloric acid, or lemon juice.
Second, we know that the digestion of food is not very good in many PWMEs. In extreme cases, some report observing undigested food in their stools. This probably results in part from a poor secretin signal being sent to the pancreas when the food arrives in the duodenum, because of the low acid content of the food mixture coming from the stomach. But it's also known that the exocrine pancreas is very dependent on methylation, so a methylation deficit could also be contributing to low digestive enzyme output by the pancreas.
Various people have been taking digestive enzyme supplements to try to improve their digestion. As I learned yesterday, and as Annesse has been telling us, the lactic acid bacteria in the sauerkraut produce a variety of enzymes. These bacteria of course use these enzymes to break down the cabbage, but they can also be effective in breaking down other foodstuffs. So by taking some sauerkraut with other foods, their digestion should be helped.
Third, we know that people with ME/CFS have yeast infections and intestinal bacterial dybiosis. Various people have been taking antibiotics or herbal antimicrobials to try to kill the unhelpful bacteria and yeasts, and have been taking various probiotics in order to replace them with helpful bacteria. The latter include Bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus, and in some cases friendly E. coli. Sauerkraut contains at least several species of lactic acid bacteria, the main one being Lactobacillus plantarum, and the bacterial counts reach 100 million to 1 billion colony forming units per gram. By taking a few grams of sauerkraut, a person could ingest comparable numbers of roughly similar species of bacteria to what is found in probiotics.
We also know that many PWMEs have leaky gut syndrome. This may be caused by dysbiotic bacteria, lack of sufficient defense of the intestinal wall by secretory IgA (which is usually found to be low in stool testing of PWMEs), gluten and casein intolerance in some cases, low glutathione, and/or low folate, preventing sufficiently rapid formation of new DNA and RNA for cells to replace the short-lived enterocytes and colonocytes. Perhaps the bacteria in sauerkraut can help with some of these factors, at least.
I continue to be skeptical that sauerkraut can do the whole job in treating ME/CFS, but based on the above and on the responses Annesse has reported that she is receiving, if I had ME/CFS myself, including digestive system dysfunction, I think I would give sauerkraut a try. I think I would also work on lifting the methylation cycle partial block, though.
Oh, one more thing: I tried to find out if there is good enough epidemiology to say whether the prevalence of lupus might be lower in countries where more sauerkraut is consumed, such as in Germany. Of course, I don't know whether the Germans currently consume more sauerkraut on the average than other nationalities. In any case, the available numbers aren't good enough to tell. There hasn't been a collection of data in different countries that uses a standard set of criteria and standard methods, so the existing numbers really can't be compared. Maybe this could be done on a more regional basis.
Best regards,
Rich
