paul-- primal defense and scd

[Guest guest]

,

Mercola uses Primal Defense with virtually all his patients and has reported

that with most of them he gets good to marvelous results, and with a small

minority they have adverse effects and he takes them off of it. He said he

absolutely recommends it to all of his patients with IBD.

So while I've gotten the sense that Elaine is very conservative with the

diet, and understand why she opts not to include it, I'm wondering why people

doing SCD seem to have some sort of disproportionate fear or adverse experience

with PD, while Mercola's (and other doctors') patients with serious gut problems

do not.

I'm totally speculating to say that I think maybe it is a supervision issue.

Someone with IBD or other very serious issue's should probably be under

medical supervision with a caring doctor who " gets it " regardless of the

treatment.

Mercola and other practitioners at his center might be more sensitive to

individual compatibility and notice adverse effects before an incompatible

product could cause too much harm.

I'm curious because I'm discussing the safety of PD on another list with

someone who seems to have an unustified villified view of it, and all I've found

is vague comments about " some people doing SCD reporting adverse effects. " So

I was wondering if you know what kind of effects specifically... if you don't

that's fine and thanks for sharing what you have, but if you do I'd be

interested.

I personally have already tried PD with amazing results and my opinion is it

is a fantastic product. I recommend you do try it. But I would follow the

directions, take it on an empty stomach, preferably a half hour before meals,

start with a low dosage, and work your way up gradually. No guarantees, but

it's helped me more than any other probiotic I've tried, whether food probiotic

or supplement probiotic.

Chris

[Guest guest]

Chris-

>I'm wondering why people

>doing SCD seem to have some sort of disproportionate fear or adverse

>experience

>with PD, while Mercola's (and other doctors') patients with serious gut

>problems

>do not.

I think there are two things to consider here.

First, at least on Healing Crow, a number of people have reported that

they've been helped a lot by Primal Defense -- but at least as many people

have reported getting into serious trouble by trying it. I'm not sure of

the hard numbers, but at a rough guess, of those who have reported, 40%

have been helped, 40% have been hurt, and 20% haven't noticed anything much

either way. Those numbers do give reason to hope, but also plenty of

reason to be cautious.

Second, Mercola seems to be faddish and obsessive. Notice how he's on an

EFT kick now (and has been for awhile) and sees everything through the lens

of emotion and stress management? He's definitely the type who has a

hammer and therefore decides all the world's a nail. He wants to apply EFT

to *EVERYTHING*. I'm not saying it can't help in a lot of cases -- I've

felt its effects myself -- but he's going overboard. Similarly, remember

when vegetable juice was the second coming, and he prescribed tons of

vegetable juice for *EVERYONE*? Well, some years later he discovered

metabolic typing (which became his new hammer) and suddenly he admitted

that all that vegetable juice wasn't even good for him, let alone all of

his patients -- but think how many symptoms he had to ignore in his own

body before finally caving in and admitting that vegetable juice wasn't a

panacea?

I don't mean to unduly knock him -- he's a great resource -- but I do think

you have to keep his single-minded obsessiveness in mind when reading his

recommendations.

OK, there's a third thing to consider: sample size. Neither the people on

Healing Crow nor probably Mercola's patients amount to a sufficient sample

to make any definitive conclusions about Primal Defense.

>vague comments about " some people doing SCD reporting adverse effects. " So

>I was wondering if you know what kind of effects specifically...

Sure. Bloody diarrhea. Immense pain. Having to go back on

prednisone. Requiring hospitalization. Stuff like that. For someone

who's very sick already, the risk of getting much sicker like that is not

something to take lightly.

I do plan to try it one of these days, but I do wish they'd remove more of

the SCD-illegal ingredients first, as I don't at all like most of them.

-

[Guest guest]

>I do plan to try it one of these days, but I do wish they'd remove more of

>the SCD-illegal ingredients first, as I don't at all like most of them.

>

>

>-

:

What are the " SCD illegal " ingredients?

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

,

I somewhat agree about Mercola, and I do think he goes on kicks, but I think

mostly his changes are replacing theory with experience. He used to be " Dr.

Fiber " in med school, but he learned by experience grains were not so great. I

don't think Mercola had to " ignore symptoms " to think vegetable juice was

doing him well, because I'm sure his health was by and large doing great at the

time. The primary benefit I've heard from him about increasing his saturated

fat intake has been the elimination of sugar cravings. He didn't eat sugar

before while he ate more vegetables and less fat, and I'm sure he'd think, like

anyone else, that it was more or less normal to crave sugar.

Mercola has put " thousands " of people on Primal Defense, and he has found it

to be most successful in treating Crohn's disease. While this is not a large

enough pool to draw definitive conclusions from, it is a pretty large pool.

Mercola is a fanatic about individual compatibility, especially now that he's

on the MTD kick. Moreover, he is extra-cautious-- just look at his warnings on

taking cod liver oil in the summer and testing vitamin D. The risk of this

is comparatively small compared to the risk of Primal Defense, if the numbers

on the SCD list are representative. So I don't think it can be easily

dismissed that Mercola doesn't find results anywhere near similar.

The most important hole in the explanation you presented is that Mercola has

himself said that he's taken some people off PD because their symptoms

worsened. So that right there proves that Mercola is attentive to the

possibility of

people's symtpoms worsening. So why hasn't Mercola put out strict warnings

about it, and why has he spoken of it so enthusiastically, if he were to find

40% of his patients worsening on it, some being seroiusly hospitalized? And

he's using it for very serious disorders like Crohn's disease.

Some clinical studies have been done with PD but no really large ones I don't

think. One with 17 people had improvement in all but one diverticulitis

patient, the " chronic constipation " and " chronic diarrhea " all improved over

75%,

the ulcerative colitis improved 25-50%, and the IBS was a mixed bag. But

*none* of them worsened. That is *not* to say that this study proves that no

one

has adverse reactions-- that would be preposterous.

It seems odd to me that SCDers can have such horrible reactions to PD, while

not being representative of the rest of the population, even though non-SCDers

are using it for similar diseases.

Could there be something about the SCD *diet* that makes PD incompatible for

some people? Or could SCDers be disproportionately using it without medical

supervision? It might be life-saving to have an attentive supervisor like

Mercola to take it off before it goes to far, and maybe if he kept the patients

he

took off PD on it, they might have ended up like some of the SCD folks who

had problems.

I have no idea, but it seems odd that this seems particular to the SCD list.

Thank you very much for sharing the information.

Chris