Monthly Archives: March 2017

IV Vitamin C Stops Sepsis Cold

IV Vitamin C Stops Sepsis in Its Tracks

Reference: NPR, Chest, Managed Care, Barry Fowler, Biofactors,

The number three cause of death in America today is the overwhelming infection that causes blood pressure collapse, kidney shut down and death called sepsis. Three hundred thousand people in America die from it each year. As far is deaths in hospitals, it’s number one. Sepsis is dangerous.

The cause of sepsis is still not exactly known, but it acts like a runaway train. “Cytokine storm” is the term used to describe the same process in severe influenza, where all your hormones of inflammation fire off in a cycle of uncontrolled and dysfunctional activation. One thing in known, there is a leaking of capillaries all over the body while alarmins (danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs)) are released. These DAMPs are nuclear, cytoplasmic, or mitochondria structures that acquire new functions outside the cell. Examples of DAMPs have great names like high mobility group box-1 protein HMGB1, S100 proteins, and mitochondrial DNA. And as a result of all that, you get organs shutting down one by one. Kidneys you can dialyze, lungs you can breathe for but once you hit three organ systems, you are done.

So, imagine the surprise when Intensivist Paul Marik from Norfolk, Virginia reported on 47 cases of sepsis in which only four died, but not one not from their sepsis. He compared that to 47 prior patients he had treated, 19 had died from the sepsis. What was the difference? IV Vitamin C. Dr Marik reports on his first case and decided to try the idea of IV vitamin C because he had heard promising case reports from Barry Fowler, and figured nothing else worked. His first patient already had her kidneys and lungs failing when he got to her and he fully expected her to die the first night in the ICU. Instead, after the IV Vitamin C, he came back in the morning to find her smiling, looking well and ready to get out of the ICU. He is now treating all his sepsis patients with IV vitamin C and some extra steroid and thiamine. He has now reached 150 patients with only one death from sepsis, far short of 30%.

Just what does IV Vitamin C do? We now know that something about sepsis depletes Vitamin C, and that depletion may be the tipping point in the accelerating vortex. When you take Vitamin C by mouth, you get a normal level of 3 all the way up to 6. That’s not much. When you take it by IV, you can get to a level of 3-500, depending how much you take. And that in 5 minutes after you stop the infusion. Complications from IV Vitamin C. Zero.

WWW.what will work for me. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve seen IV vitamin C heal severe pain from shingles. I’ve seen it fix cold and flu. And I’ve had dear close friends die from sepsis. This idea needs to get into our local hospitals so that you are protected if you get this wicked, spiraling, lethal vortex of cellular collapse. If you know an ICU doctor who would be amenable to training, have them call my office. I’ll teach them how to do it. One of my faculty had ecamplsia with twins. She was in shock and nothing was working. She chattered through shaking teeth: “Get me some IV C”. They did, and her eclampsia cooled off in under an hour. That’s just an anecdote, but that’s where progress starts.

Pop Quiz

‪1. The number one cause of death in hospitals is? Heart Attach, Cancer, Stroke, Sepsis.

Answer: Sepsis. Remember, I said, “In hospital”. Lots of heart attacks happen at home, on the way, in the nursing home, at sleep…..

‪2. We have about 70% chance of dying when we get sepsis? T or F

A: False. It’s about 30% but of a million cases in the USA every year, that’s a lot.

‪3. A cocktail of IV Vitamin C, steroid, thiamine reduced mortality to 1-2%. T or F

‪A.  One doctor study can’t really be quoted as evidence, but it sure catches your attention.

‪4. You are protected at hospitals in Milwaukee from death by sepsis. T or F


‪5. Infusion of IV Vitamin C is dangerous and must be supervised by a doctor. T or F.

Emphatically false unless you are really sloppy and let the IV infiltrate or don’t wash your hands or some other really stupid thing. I’ve done several thousand and have yet to see anything dangerous.

Eat to Optimize Your Connexins

Eat to Optimize Your Connexins

Reference: Holistic Primary Care, Remer and Mainz Jr Aced Nutr Diet, PRAL, Gap Junctions; Cold Spring Harbor,

We defined connexins two weeks ago as the links between cells that allow them to communicate rapidly and fluidly back and forth, leading to organs acting in similar coordinated fashion. Connexins allow multicellular organisms to exist, because individual organs can carry our separate functions. Liver cells act like liver cells, and blood vessel cells act like blood vessel cells, in part because they are connected to the cells next to them by connexins. Last week, we identified that many if not most diseases show reduction in connexin behavior and number. In particular, adult diabetes shows reduction in the ability to secrete insulin. There is evidence for many diseases that connexin disfunction is at the heart of the disease.

Now, can we change our connexins by lifestyle changes? To which the answer is an emphatic YES! What you eat, how you exercise and how you handle stress all have implications for connexins. That means the nature of the food we eat can get to the heart of healthy actions.

What is that nature? What makes the difference? Acid and alkali. What you eat has net acid or alkaline implications. Darrell Tanelian, MD’s book, Molecular Fitness details the implications. When you eat any food, your body digests it and the biological ash left over after you have used the food for what you use it for, is either acid or base. As a general rule, vegetables and fruits have magnesium and potassium salts which make for alkali. Meat and cheese makes for acid. You can see the sum of what you ate in the pH of your urine. As a general rule, Americans eat a lot of meat and cheese, and our urine is pH 5.5, slightly acid. Vegans tend to have less acid in their diet, and have more alkaline urine. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and monkeys are mostly vegetarian, and have quite alkaline urine.

As the acid passes through your body, your don’t change your pH in your blood. At least, not very much. Instead, you breathe differently and change the balance of pH buffers in your blood. Your serum pH doesn’t change but for a tiny bit, but your buffers change a lot as you balance out the acid passing through. And that has a huge impact on connexins. At a healthy pH of 7.4, the connexons, (the name for the link made by six connexin proteins assembled into a coating tube) are wide open. At a pH of 6.9, they are shut and cells aren’t talking to each other. Your body is shutting down. An example of that would be when you run and leg shin splints. Your muscles won’t work because you built up too much lactic acid in your leg muscles. At the molecular level, you have connexons failing. Now, in normal living your pH never ever goes below 7.3 from 7.365, but the trend line is there.

The implications of this are significant. In the long run, optimal health is going to come from a diet of abundant vegetables and fruits that makes you alkaline. Raisins, for example, are premier alkalizing foods. All vegetables have magnesium and potassium salts that participate in “alkalizing” you. That keeps your connexin proteins making open, functioning connexons.

What to do with a ketogenic diet that is higher acid? Losing weight and reducing blood glucose is so critically important that the cost benefit is clearly on the side of losing weight. Once your weight is lost, the more vegetables you eat, the better. Fat is pH neutral, so butter, coconut oil and olive oil are dandy.

www.What Will Work for me. I have diabetic genes, as do most of us. I’m finding lots of recipes that are rich in fat and vegetables. We went to an Indian restaurant this weekend and I had okra curry. Delicious. Hold the rice. I managed to make it through dinner and not mention connexins once to my table mates.

Pop Quiz

‪1. Connexins are the proteins that assemble together to make connexons, the communicating links between cells of similar types. T or F

True. Whew, you get it right, after three weeks.

‪2. Connexin proteins are necessary for animals to have multicellular structure that works in a coordinated fashion. T or F


‪3. We haven’t been able to identify changes in connexons with diseases making them an interesting oddity, but not clinically useful. T or F

Pants on fire, false. We don’t don’t know how to test them, but their are dramatically altered in just about every illness of any organ system.

‪4. We don’t know how to alter connexin function? T or F

Pants on fire again. Many supposedly “healthy” behaviors also have beneficial impacts on connexins. Exercise, stress reduction, good sleep, healthy eating all have beneficial impacts on connexins.

‪5. The most significant thing we can do improve connexin function is to eat what?

Answer: More alkalizing foods; rich in potassium and magnesium – fruits and vegetables.

Connexins and Diabetes

Connexins and Diabetes

References: J. Cell Biology, J Biol Chemistry, FEBS Letter,

Connexins. What we learned last week was basic. Connexins are the proteins that make for connections between cells. They exist in every creature with more than a few cells. For multicellular organisms to exist, connexins have to become part of the picture. And the management of fuel for cells in central to an organism that has specialized digestive processes. To have a gut, blood, central nervous system, bones, muscles and everything else means you have to have a centralized control system for fuel allocation. That central traffic cop is the pancreas gland with its beta cells. They produce insulin, and insulin is the key hormone used to signal storage of calories for future use. Traditional medicine calls insulin your blood sugar controlling hormone. A more inclusive vision would be to say that insulin rises in response to rising blood sugars which occurs during the time of year of calorie excess, just before the time of year of calorie deficit. It’s a good time to store calories.

The storing of calories as insurance against future starvation is a key feature of human survival (and all creatures). That’s insulin’s job. How do connexins play a part in all that? These articles this month go right to the heart of that role. When you knock out the ability of pancreas beta cells to make connexins, their ability to make insulin drops proportionately. This means for us to have a sensible, balanced and nuanced control of glucose, we have to have proper connexin function.

What happens in humans when we get overweight, and become diabetic? Our fat cells get bigger and we demand more and more insulin to keep glucose in a tight range. We can produce that extra insulin for a while, but eventually exhaust our ability to produce sufficient insulin to control blood glucose adequately enough. Glucose is a very reactive chemical. Granted, it is fuel to burn, which is why being reactive helps, but high levels of it stick to all sorts of places where it’s not meant to be. And that leads to disease too. Our body doesn’t like high glucose, and we frantically put out more insulin to regulate that. And what happens when we can’t make enough insulin any more? You got it, the first step is connexons between cells dropping off as we produce fewer and fewer connexins. This makes connexin dysfunction the first step in diabetes development. The ability of our beta cells in our pancreas to talk to each other via their connecting connexins is the first step to developing diabetes.

And guess what happens in heart disease, brain disease, muscle disease, kidney disease?…..Name an organ and I can show you references that demonstrate that connexins fall off and connexons (the name for the actual channel between cells) between cells decrease. The level to which all your organ types are connected to each other is the level to which you are healthy. This loss of intracellular connections via these proteins called connexins is the basis of much illness.

The $ 64 k question is, what can we do to alter our connexins? Is that something we have control over? And the answer is yes! Next week.

www.What will work for me. All right. I’ve learned that connexins are the protein channels between cells that allow communications between similar cell types, allowing different cells to act as coordinated organs. Muscles can contract together. Liver cells and digest together. Brains can think… etc. Sounds like this is at the heart of life of multicellular organs. I love getting down to the very basic facts. But I’m eager to know how I can alter it with my own behavior. I guess for that, I have to wait till next week.


Pop Quiz:

‪1. Connexins are the key mechanisms of different cell type to function as independent organs. T or F

Right on.

‪2. In diabetes, our pancreas beta cells have more connexins functioning with higher blood glucose. T or F

False.     That’s backwards.

‪3. Virtually every illness with organ dysfunction can demonstrate lousy connexins of the organ that’s not working. T or F

T.  Isn’t that fascinating?

‪4. Earth worms have connexins. T or F

True. They have muscles that work in a coordinated fashion. That wouldn’t happen without those links.

‪5. Our gut has connexins that get discombobulated with gluten. T or F

Bingo. You intuited that and you were right. Gluten disrupts connexins between gut cells.


Connexion Connection

Connexin Connection

References: Wikipedia, Molecular Fitness,Cell Science,

Ever heard of Connexins? I hadn’t. Until I read Darrell Tanelian’s book. Here is what they are. They are the proteins that make up the connecting channels between cells. Different organs in your body act together in concert because they know they are the same as their neighbor. A liver cell knows it is a liver cell because it has hundreds of connecting little passageways between itself and it’s neighbor. Those protein bridges are constructed of 6 identical proteins that fit together to make a cohesive channel that connects one cell to another. A brain cell knows it is a brain cell because it’s connections tell it that it is in a brain environment. Same with pancreas, gut, muscle, heart, kidney, bone… get the drift.

That channel can relax and open up, letting stuff through, or it can shut down and close off passage of any signaling messages. A healthy cell has a lot of connecting passages/links between itself and its neighbors. And an unhealthy cell has less and less connecting sites.

You will get the drift of the power of connexins with gut cells. Your intestine has a one cell layer between your food (the outside world) and your inner self, your immune system and blood supply. That cell layer is held together with three tiny bridges of connexins. Inflammatory bowel disease appears to be an illness of uncontrolled inflammation, in part because of dysfunctional connexin activity. This appears to be the cutting edge of gut research right now, as the functions of connexins, and their cousins, panexins, appears to be the mechanism behind most gut diseases. There are even some commercial companies selling the agents that pass back and forth between gut cells in their communications through their gap junctions as a means of fixing gluten and glyphosate injury to the gut.

The bottom line of connexins is that they allow multi-cellular organisms to exist. Without different tissues being able to differentiate themselves into organs with separate form and function, we wouldn’t benefit from being anything more than a big algae. The process of cellular evolution from single cell to human beings is founded on connexins. They had to come very early in the game of life on earth. Being that fundamental to human form, the well being of connexins and understanding their role in health for the greater organism might be a critical link to understanding. And that is about as state of the art as we can get.

WWW.What will work for me. I want to know more. I love getting down to the details, especially it it’s something I can change with lifestyle choices. I found the topic getting a sense that being overweight and insulin intolerant starts with dysfunctional connexins. I’m fascinated. More next week.

Pop Quiz

‪1. Connexins are proteins that allow cells to communicate with each other. T or F Bingo

Right on the money.

‪2. The ability of different tissues to act differently from other tissues depends on cells working together in a coordinated fashion, which requires connexins? T or F

Ok, now you are on a roll.

‪3. If I understand it, connexins might then be part of organ tissues repairing themselves, and keeping them selves happy? T or F

You are getting ahead but you got the drift. We are now researching how to repair damaged heart tissue with stem cells. Their ability to develop into new heart cells requires that they get their connexins right.

‪4. Single cell organisms have connexins. T or F Nope.

It’s connexins that define multi cell organisms, up to and including you.

‪5. Every organ in the human body has connexins. T or F True.

And their health depends on their having a good population of them.


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