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Multiple binders

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seamyb

Senior Member
Messages
560
Does anybody have any knowledge on the correct way to take multiple binders? I'm taking charcoal at the minute and have bentonite clay on the way. Is it ok to take these two together, at the same time?

I take charcoal at night only, I don't like the idea of mopping up nutrients from my food. Is it ok to take both right before bed or is it better to alternate nights?

Also, what are your thoughts on taking it multiple times a day? Is it necessary and are my concerns about nutrients valid?

Thanks.
 
Rufous McKinney

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,489
seamyb said:
I take charcoal at night only, I don't like the idea of mopping up nutrients from my food. Is it ok to take both right before bed or is it better to alternate nights?
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I really also need help on how to deploy binders. They are here, awaiting deployment.

When do you eat dinner? I eat late breakfast and late dinner.

And then if I"m trying to block stuff coming from taking detox supplements- when do you block, relative to the supplements? (or in my case, possibly tea which moves Lymph).

or a glycine, or an NAC . Or a glass of water....
 
Rufous McKinney

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,489
seamyb said:
what are your thoughts on taking it multiple times a day?
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this sure sounds tricky, multiple times a day. Blocking nutrients does't sound like a good plan.

I better decide soon to go read more about this.

You swallow a blocker. Doesn't it just immediately absorb whatever is in your wet stomach? Which I presume is stomach acid or the food digesting.

???

I'm thinking I want to block whats leaking out of my intestines. or what releasing from the liver into the colon or something. And when do I do that?
 
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seamyb

Senior Member
Messages
560
Rufous McKinney said:
When do you eat dinner?
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Any time between 12am and 12am.

See, this is the thing as well. Taking them multiple times a day interferes with everything. 2 hours before and after food. If you were to take them 3 times a day, you'd have to have 12 hours where you know you're not eating or taking supplements. Madness.

Rufous McKinney said:
Doesn't it just immediately absorb whatever is in your wet stomach?
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Well absorb might be the wrong way of thinking about it. It's more like a magnet (although it's done via the holes in the atomic structure), so you can pick up something in the stomach but release it again in the intestines and pick something up again there.

That's why a herx is possible with binders. You mobilise toxins for a while. It's only when you've been taking them long enough that, statistically, you have brought more toxins to the... grand opening... than you have mobilised.
 
wabi-sabi

wabi-sabi

Senior Member
Messages
1,596
Location
small town midwest
seamyb said:
Is there any reason for not taking it?
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Well, I figure that our bodies are already so depleted, trying to suck more out of us is a bad idea. I would try to put more good stuff in.

Charcoal works by gluing itself to something bad in your stomach and helping you excrete it. that's why its' used for acute poisoning and why it can lead to nutritional deficiencies and mess up any medications you might be taking. Charcoal can't remove anything from your body if that bad thing has already left your stomach and gone into the bloodstream. The only toxins it removes are the ones that are still in your stomach. I tend to doubt this is the problem with the toxic feeling that ME/CFS produces.

Upshot: ME/CFS is in our blood not your stomach. Charcoal can only clean out your stomach and it will clean out necessary vitamins you really don't need to loose.
 
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seamyb

Senior Member
Messages
560
wabi-sabi said:
The only toxins it removes are the ones that are still in your stomach. I tend to doubt this is the problem with the toxic feeling that ME/CFS produces.
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Ah, yes, but the theory on biotoxin illness goes like this: the liver detoxifies toxins and releases them into the intestines through the bile. Mycotoxins are ionophoric meaning part of them is water soluble and part of them is fat soluble. So they can easily stay in the intestines and get reintroduced to the bloodstream through the enterohepatic circulation. So rather than being excreted, they just go back into the blood and more and more get into the cells (again the ionophoric nature of these toxins means they just bypass cell defenses).

The theory goes that this cycle needs to be broken with the use of binders. Most of the biotoxin doctors swear by them and claim patients begin to see improvements on binders alone. Of course, the source needs to be eradicated as well...
 
Rufous McKinney

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,489
wabi-sabi said:
Upshot: ME/CFS is in our blood not your stomach. Charcoal can only clean out your stomach and it will clean out necessary vitamins you really don't need to loose.
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I appreciate your diligence in reporting this to us here. I"m very ambivalent about using the charcoal.

I really want to somehow get to the other side of herxring and detoxing..
 
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seamyb

Senior Member
Messages
560
wabi-sabi said:
Ooh, I'm going to have to look up the liver now. This could take some time...
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That's how it goes isn't it... you're beginning to get on top of it all and then you realise there are several major organs and millions of processes you know nothing about and then you're back to cursing the fact you have to be your own bloody doctor!!!
 
Rufous McKinney

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,489
wabi-sabi said:
Ooh, I'm going to have to look up the liver now. This could take some time...
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yes well True - its the liver spitting much of what we have to deal with- out into the system to deal with it, yet again.


When I take my four chinese herbs to address IBS-d....one of the herbs is chatting with the liver. Somehow we need to get past the stomach.....
 
wabi-sabi

wabi-sabi

Senior Member
Messages
1,596
Location
small town midwest
One thought that occurs- you need to know what specific substance you are trying to detoxify. Unfortunately generic talk about "toxins" doesn't work here. So what you might ask your biotoxin peeps-:

1)What chemical are you trying to detox?
2) What metabolic pathways does this chemical go through in the liver? Is it excreted unchanged or is a metabolite excreted?
3) If it is excreted how fast? If it goes through entero-hepatic circulation, how fast?
4) Will charcoal bind this substance or its metabolite? Is so, what dose?
5) What side effects will there be?
6) How long will it take to be excreted?
 
wabi-sabi

wabi-sabi

Senior Member
Messages
1,596
Location
small town midwest
Here is my very brief impression after googling, so you know, you might want a pharmacologist instead of me...

Mycotoxins are cleaned up by the liver through a process called biotransformation- neat name right? Fancy sounding but doesn't tell you much. What appears to be going on is the liver takes a harmful substance-mycotoxin- and changes it into a harmless substance through a series of chemical reactions. This means what the liver excretes into bile is quite harmless. But, the liver is harmed in the process in a way that can't be fixed by just squirting stuff into the bile. If that were possible the liver would have done it. The liver takes one for the team by protecting the rest of the body from harmful stuff at the expense of its own health. Thank you, liver!

Upshot: Charcoal won't detox a mycotoxin and it won't help your liver. The liver has already done the dirty work and taken the hit by the time anything goes into bile. An alcoholic can't protect their liver by putting charcoal in their drinks after they've already been an alcoholic. The relevant damage has been done already. Know your toxins. They don't all work the same and aren't helped by the same thing. Charcoal is meant for acute poisoning. Let it do its job and find something else for chronic issues. Happy note: I can't think of any research that shows liver damage with ME/CFS.
 
Rufous McKinney

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,489
I do alot of the chinese traditional, so the liver is so key to most treatments.

1) I lost 45 pounds, slowly but it was the lifetime weight accumulation...so wonder what was store up there, only to be released again? (fats tend to contain the fat soluble things like the pesticides; )

2) from taking proteolytic enzymes now and then- metals can be tasted in the mouth. They came out of stored up biofilms and lymph and probably arterial deposits- I can hardly HANDLE more than one enzyme. My husband takes them every day all the time. I still remember taking one three months ago.

3)the lymph is also storing it up..whatever are the various items which feel like they poison us, those items can be in the lymph- anything which moves my lymph makes me real sick.

4)acupuncture treatments stimulate movement which lead to herxing and detox in my case.

What I am not clear on is viral die offs and if in fact those happen.

Its some huge problem for me, I seem to be really gummed up.
 
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seamyb

Senior Member
Messages
560
wabi-sabi said:
Mycotoxins are cleaned up by the liver through a process called biotransformation
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Well yes, usually the liver makes toxic compounds less toxic. But not always non-toxic. Take the endogenously formed bilirubin. It goes through Liver conjugation and comes out the bile where it has to be further metabolised by bacteria. Even in the conjugated form, a buildup of bilirubin is toxic and causes jaundice. And this is a molecule we have been evolving with for (prepare for understatement) literally decades.

More is unknown about mycotoxins than is known. A particularly lacking area is their metabolism and excretion. I'd wager that given the clinical claims of the biotoxin community with regards to binders, the liver makes its best attempt at detoxifying these compounds but often it isn't enough to prevent illness. Especially when genetics and circumstance come into the equation.
 
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seamyb

Senior Member
Messages
560
From my own personal observations, binders such as charcoal are usually meant to be constipating. I see the opposite effect. I get constipated from my illness. I get severe pain in my gut and a very shit motility, pun intended. And the constipation comes on a day or so after I take nasal sprays, which the theory (and the ensuing crash) says increases my toxic load. Charcoal seems to restore my gut motility and get rid of my pains. I've noticed my gut is a lot healthier when I take it. I may also have noticed that it lowers my incidence of air hunger (but I've no idea what causes this, so meh). It's early days still, but for the moment I'll be sticking my fingers in my ears at your very valid and well-reasoned objections. But please continue to debate it if you so wish.
 
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