Fwd: [CO-CURE] MED: Mercury and secretin in autism--the connection

[Guest guest]

From Rich Van Konynenburg, Ph.D. <richvank@...>:

I think I have just cracked the connection between secretin and mercury

toxicity in autism. This may have some relevance to CFS as well, since

mercury toxicity is a major factor in many cases of CFS.

For background, some of you may know that some years back it was

accidentally discovered by Virginia Beck, an autism mother, that an

injection of the secretin produced by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden

(used for a pancreatic function test) helped improve her son's autism

symptoms. This led to quite a flurry in the autism community, and a

synthetically made pure secretin was tested and failed to work. However,

the secretin extracted from pigs did work, and Dr. Gregg proposed

that it was because the pig version contained prosecretin, which would last

longer in the body than actual secretin. Dr. Gregg began supplying dried

pig duodenum powder to those who requested it, and many autism parents

reported tha! t this did help.

Now we see that there is overwhelming evidence that there is a connection

between mercury and autism, particularly ethylmercury coming from the

increased number of vaccinations that were required in the children as time

went on.

I've been struggling with the question of what could be the connection

between mercury toxicity and the secretin effect.

Now I think I have it. As you may know, the main toxic biochemical effect

of mercury in the body is to bind to sulfur atoms that are found in the

cysteine residues of enzymes and other proteins. When this occurs, it

blocks the ability of these sulfur atoms to perform their normal

functions. In many cases, they normally bind to each other within protein

chains to form disulfide bonds, which give the protein molecules their

characteristic structure.

I just learned that the receptors for secretin contain six cysteine

residues, that these residues n! ormally form three disulfide bonds, and

that these bonds are critical to the operation of the secretin receptor. I

therefore suggest that the connection between mercury toxicity and the

secretin malfunction in autism is explained by mercury binding to cysteine

residues in secretin receptors, thus distorting their structures and their

function. I think this pulls these observations together nicely.

I think this also explains why some children with autism who will eat only

french fries before mercury detox treatment are reported to accept more

normal diets afterward. French fries consist largely of starch that has

been processed at a high temperature, breaking its chains and making it

fairly easy to be further broken down to glucose, which can be

absorbed. It thus does not require much digestion, and therefore a person

without much secretin function, who would therefore not put out much

pancreatic juice, would still be able to absorb glucose fairly readily from

french fries. Protein-containing foods wou! ld be much more difficult to

cope with, without secretin, and as Dr. Gregg has suggested, the stomach

acid provoked by ingestion of proteins would not be neutralized well by

pancreatic bicarbonate in the duodenum if the secretin function is

impaired. Thus, the acid could attack the wall of the intestine, causing

pain. This may be the main reason these kids stick to french fries (or

grapes, which have a lot of glucose).

Rich Van Konynenburg, Ph.D.

---------------------------------------------

Send posts to CO-CURE@...

Unsubscribe at http://www.co-cure.org/unsub.htm

Too much mail? Try a digest version. See http://www.co-cure.org/digest.htm

---------------------------------------------

Co-Cure's purpose is to provide information from across the spectrum of

opinion concerning medical, research and political aspects of ME/CFS and/or

FMS. We take no position on the validity of any specific scientific or

political opinion expressed in Co-Cure posts, and we urge readers to

research the various opinions available before assuming any one

interpretation is definitive. The Co-Cure website <www.co-cure.org> has a

link to our complete archive of posts as well as articles of central

importance to the issues of our community.

---------------------------------------------