ARBs, Vitamin D, TNF-alpha, TLR4, CD40, Adiponectin, the Universe & Everything.

[Guest guest]

Months ago someone sent me an email about the experimental treatment

protocol for various health conditions, which uses Benicar, avoids

vitamin D, and later uses minocycline. Since then, I've ended up

spending way too much of my online time, reading studies relating to

the protocol and the diseases it's supposed to treat. Occasionally in

my readings, I would find something interesting.

For example, there is a fairly new theory of why pain and fatigue

occurs in sarcoidosis. Apparently many people with sarcoidosis have a

condition known as small fiber neuropathy, which is not very easy to

diagnose, so it's easy to overlook. This could be the real cause of

many of the obscure symptoms in sarcoidosis, which the experimental

protocol instead believes is due to excess vitamin D.

One of the main beliefs of the protocol is that vitamin D is being

produced by the immune system in many diseases, and that this is

responsible for some of the disease symptoms. But the medical

literature only mentions a few specific diseases where this production

contributes noticable amounts of vitamin D to the circulating levels.

Sarcoidosis and Crohn's disease are 2 such diseases. I did a lot of

reading about those diseases.

I created a simple web page where I list some of the more interesting

facts I learned from the studies I read. It's a bit too long to post,

but I think that some people here might be interested in reading some

of it. See here:

http://web.mit.edu/london/www/universe.html

Since I initially was interested in vitamin D and calcium metabolism

(i.e. why does hypercalcemia occur sometimes but not others), my web

page starts by talking about that, and then later I talk about studies

that relate to angiotnesin II and inflammation. I include a bit of

introductory information, which probably most people here know, but

eventually I do get to some good stuff.

Hopefully, someone out there might find these facts as interesting as

I did. The main intent of my writing it, was to show what's occurring

in well recognized vitamin D producing inflammatory conditions, and

show why it might be possible that the experimental protocol might

help those conditions. Once one understands this, it hopefully would

make it clearer for people to answer the question of whether such a

protocol would have any use for other conditions, such as fibromyalgia

and CFS. I have mainly left the answering of that question up to the

reader themselves.

Have fun reading it.

Mark