Proposed Biochemical Cause and Remedy for Crohn's Disease

When the remedies were first discovered, they were tried only by people with Crohn's Disease. However, since then some people with ulcerative colitis have tried them and found them to be equally effective.

I am not a medical doctor and thus do not attempt to treat people; but, in an effort to help a new friend, Barbara, who suffers from Crohn's Disease (CD), I performed a literature search, and thought deeply about the disease. Within this process I identified two new potential approaches that I thought might be helpful. Neither approach had been used for CD before. I provided Barbara with the results of my search along with my first theory about how CD might be remedied. She discussed it with her physician. She told me that he said that he didn't see how trying it would do her any harm. She had abdominal pain, which had lasted for more than three months with varying degrees of severity, even though she was under a doctor's care and her disease was in partial remission. Barbara decided to try the suggested remedy. She was working half days because of the inflammation, went home at noon as usual, purchased the material at a health food store at minimal cost and applied it. Her abdominal pain was reduced to a mild sensitivity within an hour. That was in February 1995. She was able to return to work full time shortly thereafter. Her disease has been under control ever since then without other medications being required. She gradually recovered her full physical strength and general health, and has noticed no ill side effects from the remedy. She said that before this time she rarely had one good day a month. Shortly after starting the "treatment" she said she felt terrific and rarely had one bad day a month. Her disease management cost changed from approximately $5,000 per year (covered by insurance) with conventional medications which did not work very well and had substantial negative side effects, to approximately $50.00 per year (no insurance coverage needed) with far better control of the disease and absolutely no negative side effects.

Since that time more than twenty other people with Crohn's Disease and several with Ulcerative Colitis (UC) have chosen to try it. It seems to work equally well with both diseases. They purchased and applied their own material. Their reported success rate has been better than 90%. They have been able to discontinue other medications and enjoy freedom from abdominal pain and intestinal inflammation. Once it works for an individual, there are no cases of a person becoming desensitized to its benefits. It continues to work, with additional applications as needed, indefinitely. According to my theory, the remedy does not just block the pain, it stops both diseases by stopping the common process that causes the degeneration of the intestine.

The time span between my first learning about Barbara's disease (I had never heard of Crohn's Disease before) to my identification of the first projected remedy was three days. She tried it the next day and to my amazement she said it took effect within an hour. This relatively brief time to effectiveness has been repeated many times with many people. I have been told of pain relief time ranging from 20 minutes to four hours.

I should make it clear that I am not selling anything and have no financial interest in the remedies. My motivation is strictly humanitarian. I would simply like to contribute what I can to help eliminate the horrible suffering associated with these diseases.

I. Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) as a Remedy for Crohn's Disease

In order to appreciate the profoundness of the remedy, which is deceptively trivial in appearance, I believe it is important not only to present the results, but also to take the reader through the technical reasoning I employed. I have a formal education in chemistry and chemical engineering and am now retired after spending more than 30 years performing research at a national laboratory. During that time I developed a personal fascination with the potential of nutritional supplements for helping a broad range of physical and mental problems. It started when I was on the board of directors of a youth home with 70 problem children (wards of the court) and wanted to explore possible approaches for helping the children. This gradually led me into making a serious study of nutrition, biochemistry, medical physiology and psychology and the interrelation between them. I was deep into studying textbooks and performing literature searches on Medline (on the Internet) when I first met Barbara. She was the secretary for the new group I had joined at the national laboratory. I found her to be an exceptionally pleasant person with an exceptionally serious, disabling illness. So, I told her that I would use the capabilities I had developed to try to find something that might help her. I was proud and shocked when the first suggestion I made, derived from my first technical analysis of the cause of Crohn's Disease, was totally successful.

Upon starting the literature search I quickly discovered that the conventional treatment for CD used steroids or sulfa drugs with only moderate success. Failure of the steroids frequently resulted in the need for surgeries removing the damaged part of the intestine. Multiple surgeries eventually end with the need for an ileostomy or a colostomy where excretion of the feces is diverted through the abdominal wall and is collected externally in a bag for disposal. Many other treatments had been tried with little success. The attempts at different treatments seemed almost random, possibly because there was no clear understanding of the cause of the disease. Some believed it was an autoimune disease, but the evidence for that was not conclusive.

I decided to take a more logically tight, systematic approach, as I would do with one of my typical research projects. This involved first postulating a damage mechanism, checking it against the literature to see if it survives, and designing what should be a logically tight treatment based on the assumed mechanism. In order for me to have any chance of success with my extremely limited access to almost anything sophisticated, I knew I had to approach the problem with a very different thought process than the elaborate research facilities had. The first thing I did was to mentally separate the primary, complex cause of the disease from the damage mechanism, which I hoped may not be so complex. I then focused on the damage mechanism, which I hoped would be more amenable to a simple solution. I reasoned that the damage mechanism was very likely hydroxyl radical attack on the intestinal cells. From reading the medical literature, I discovered that there was considerable evidence that this mechanism might be a primary cause of colon cancer. They are well known to have the capability of destroying cells through oxidative attack and I thought Crohn's Disease might be another expression of their damage. A literature search identified more than 15 publications in the last five years in which the authors also felt this might be true.

In a previous Medline literature search I had done on DMSO, focused on evaluating its toxicity, I discovered not only a lack of toxicity but also that it had been measured to be a powerful antioxidant. The search over the previous five years of medical publications yielded 1117 abstracts describing instances where DMSO was used. Many of the abstracts openly stated that DMSO was a well tolerated material, and there were no publications indicating any level of toxicity. DMSO had been used in a variety of medical applications, but never for Crohn's Disease. One paper presenting results for a number of materials being tested for antioxidant activity, listed the compounds in order of antioxidant effectiveness and then added the statement that none of them were as effective as DMSO.

DMSO has another very important feature that distinguishes it from commonly used vitamin antioxidants. It will rapidly diffuse through the skin into the blood stream. (There is no need or advantage to taking it orally.) According to my initial theory, this is not just an application convenience, but an essential feature that would make it more effective in the treatment of CD than other antioxidants.

I reasoned that if the damaging hydroxyl radicals are generated inside the intestinal cells, the antioxidants will have to penetrate the cell membranes to get at them. Vitamin antioxidants can have a difficult time penetrating the membranes, which may explain why they are ineffective for treating CD. However, DMSO cannot be stopped by any membrane. That is why it can rapidly diffuse directly through the skin. Thus, only DMSO (and now a second material with a slightly different mechanism, Melatonin, which I will discuss below) would be able to penetrate the cell membranes rapidly and quickly enough to deactivate damaging hydroxyl radicals generated inside the cells before they do damage. I postulated that because of this very unique penetrating characteristic, only DMSO, and now Melatonin, might be effective in reducing the intestinal damage associated with Crohn's Disease. If my theory is true, treatment with DMSO would also serve to illuminate the biochemical cause of CD.

With these thoughts in mind, I thought DMSO had a reasonable chance of helping Barbara with her CD. When I talked to her about it, she told me that she had owned horses for many years and was quite familiar with DMSOs frequent use in veterinary medicine. She felt it would be a safe thing to try, in small amounts, even though she was aware that its use for application to humans had been approved by the FDA only for the treatment of interstitial cystitis. She consulted her physician and he thought it could safely be applied topically. When Barbara started using DMSO she was working half days because she was trying to recover from repair surgery and the deterioration caused by a major relapse of her disease. She went home at noon, as usual, and bought some DMSO at a health food store. She applied "about a teaspoon full or less" to her abdomen. (The body location is not important!) She then went to an afternoon movie. An hour into the movie Barbara noticed that something was missing. Most of her abdominal pain was gone!

Shortly thereafter Barbara was able to return to work full time and was feeling "wonderful". After this success, I am amazed at how many people then called me to find out about it. I discovered that this horribly painful, commonly fatal disease is very prevalent. I am thus compelled to write this paper in an attempt to get this information into the Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis community so it can be further evaluated, and hopefully provide near-term, safe help.

If my theory is correct, DMSO does not stop the primary cause of Crohn's Disease. It only stops the damage mechanism, very rapidly. Thus, DMSO may have to be used on a continuing basis. The people using it so far apply it only when they feel the onset of abdominal pain. The DMSO quickly stops the pain (and the intestinal damage process) commonly in less than one hour but it can take up to a few days of repeated application. One of the benefits of its rapid action is that it does not have to be taken in a preventive mode, and there are no withdrawal problems. This is in contrast to the steroid treatment which takes several weeks to take effect and thus often has to be taken in a preventive mode, and where withdrawal must be done with great care. The natural course of Crohn's Disease is to cycle between active and remissive states. The DMSO appears to prevent damage during the active state, and may be required sporadically during remission. It appears to be an extremely affordable remedy that a person can live with comfortably. I recently talked to Barbara and she said it continues to control her CD when it becomes active, but she had to use it only twice in the last year.

II. Melatonin as a Remedy for Crohn's Disease

Melatonin is well known as an effective, nonprescription sleeping pill. In the book "Melatonin" by Ray Sahelian, M.D., he references research done by Hardeland, et al. that states "Melatonin has been found to be the most potent physiological scavenger of hydroxyl radicals ever detected. Melatonin stops damage immediately and is more effective as an antioxidant than even vitamins C and E." He also states that Melatonin has the advantage of being able to freely enter and permeate all parts of a cell.

Given the experience with DMSO helping Crohn's Disease, upon reading this, it seemed reasonable to me that Melatonin might be another likely remedy for C.D. I brought this to the attention of Barbara and discovered that she had just started taking Melatonin to help her sleeping problems. She decided to stop using DMSO and see if the Melatonin would control her C.D. It seemed to work for approximately two months when she started to get a recurrence of abdominal pain. At this point she returned to using DMSO, which controlled the pain in its characteristic short time.

Since Barbara's experience, many people have tried both DMSO and Melatonin and both have worked quite well. It is difficult to say if they would both work quite well on the same person because different individuals seem to have chosen one or the other approach and remained with it once it worked. There seemed to be one significant difference in that it appears that DMSO seems to take effect within an hour while Melatonin might take a week or so.

At this point approximately half of those trying this are happy with Melatonin and half with DMSO. It is difficult to say in advance whether DMSO or Melatonin will be the best approach for any particular individual. One of the most interesting points is that once an approach does work for an individual, it does not become ineffectual with time.

I want to remind people that this write-up is for information only and is not a recommendation for treatment. I strongly recommend that you discuss this with your physician and read the large amount of information that has been published about both DMSO and Melatonin before taking any action.

Proposed Biochemical Mechanisms for DMSO Mitigating Crohn's Disease

The Proposed Biochemical Cause of Crohn's Disease

I propose that the cause of Crohn's Disease is oxidative attack on the intestine, and not an autoimmune attack. Specifically, the attack follows the Haber-Weiss reaction where ferrous ions catalyze the dissociation of biochemically produced hydrogen peroxide into highly reactive hydroxyl radicals. The excessively high production rate of hydroxyl radicals then produces cellular damage in the intestine. The reaction goes as follows:

H₂O₂ + Fe(+2) = Fe(+3) + OH- + HO

hydrogen peroxide + ferrous ions
react to produce
ferric ions + hydroxyl ions + hydroxyl free radicals

This reaction is always taking place in normal cells and can play a constructive metabolic role by helping with the initial oxidation of fats in the peroxisomes. However, for people with Crohn's Disease, it takes place to excess.

The Proposed Mitigation Mechanisms for Melatonin and DMSO

Melatonin

In the book "Melatonin" by Ray Sahelian he states that Reiter, one of the most active researchers on Melatonin, believes that it stimulates the enzyme glutathione peroxidase, one of the body's most powerful antioxidants. The details of how this enzyme operates to remove hydrogen peroxide is discussed in many books on biochemistry, and won't be reproduced here.

DMSO

Mechanism 1: DMSO can be readily oxidized to dimethyl sulfone. DMSO has one oxygen atom and dimethyl sulfone has two. In the presence of hydrogen peroxide it can be oxidized, picking up one oxygen atom, converting the hydrogen peroxide to water.

Mechanism 2: In the process of carrying out literature searches, I discovered a paper in which it was reported that DMSO increased the number of transferrin receptor sites displayed on the outer membranes of two standard cell cultures with a response time of approximately ten minutes. ("A Rapid Redistribution of the Transferrin Receptor to the Cell Surface of HL-60 Cells and K562 Cells upon Treatment with Dimethyl Sulfoxide Due to Slowing of Endocytosis" D. Vestal et.al., Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Vol. 276, No. 1, Jan. 1990, PP. 278-284) This opens up the possibility of a surprise mechanism for DMSO mitigating Crohn's Disease. Transferrin transports iron in the blood. It picks it up from the intestine and brings it to all the cells in the body that need it.

If we postulate that this same effect occurs when DMSO is applied to the body, it will increase the rate of transport of iron out of the intestine and to other cells in the body. The immediate effect will be to lower the iron concentration in the intestine, and thus lower the rate of production of hydroxyl radicals in the intestine via the Haber-Weiss reaction (catalyzed by iron) discussed above.

It is interesting to note that the measured response time of the cells is fully consistent with the rapid response CD people observe for DMSO mitigating their abdominal pain.

It is also possible to postulate additional, downstream effects.

1) The increased transport of iron will specifically increase its transport to the bone marrow. This could increase production of hemoglobin, reducing any anemia that might exist, which is common with people experiencing a CD inflammation.

2) In normal people, the absorption of iron into the blood from the intestine is actively controlled. If this active control mechanism is sensing on anemia or the lack of it, then (in its simplest conceptual form) the existence of anemia would result in increased iron absorption in the intestinal cells, and the reduction of anemia would have a corresponding reduction of iron absorption. Thus, if the application of DMSO resulted in reduced anemia, it would reduce the rate of absorption of iron (from food) into the the intestinal cells while increasing its rate of removal from the intestinal cells by transferrin in the blood, resulting in a two-pronged approach to reducing the Haber-Weiss reaction.

The actual control mechanism for iron absorption is complex and only partly understood. One mechanism that has been demonstrated to regulate the transfer of iron actoss the mucosal-capillary interface is the synthesis of apoferritin by the mucosal cells. When little iron is required by the host, a large amount of apoferritin is synthesized to trap the iron within the mucosal cells and prevent transfer to the capillary bed. As the cells turn over (within a week), their contents are extruded into the intestinal lumen without absorption occurring, thus excreting unneeded iron. When there is a iron deficiency, virtually no apoferritin is synthesized so as not to compete against the transfer of iron to the deficient host. Considering this mechanism, one could postulate that the existance of anemia may prevent the formation of apoferritin. This would result in an increase in free (active) iron ions in the mucosal cells. If this is combined with an ineffectual removal of them into the blood by insufficient transferrin transport capacity, these free iron ions could then be very active in the Haber-Weiss reaction, producing excess hydroxyl radicals, and resulting in celular damage. DMSO would cause increased transferrin transport capacity, reducing anemia, resulting in increased production of apoferritin in the mucosal cells, reducing free iron ion concentration, and thus reducing the activity of the Haber-Weiss reaction and cellular damage.

A Research Effort to Carry Out Needed Controlled Studies

I would like to strongly encourage the performance of controlled studies to evaluate the DMSO/Melatonin approach to mitigating Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis so as to place it on a more sound technical basis. The ultimate goal would be to satisfy FDA requirements to qualify one or both of them as approved treatments.

UPDATE, 11/99

I just received the following e-mail which I found to be particularly relevant and which stimulated some additional thoughts that might be helpful:

The e-Mail:

Subject: Melatonin & TNF concentrations

Sent: 10/31/19 2:35 AM

Received: 11/4/99 5:18 PM

From: CBerger338@aol.com

To: krysalis@value.net

Dear Mr. Gregg.

I wanted to share with you some observations regarding the use of Melatonin for Crohn's Disease. Since I have Crohn's, I read with interest your several publications on the web regarding the use of DMSO & Melatonin for use with Crohn's Disease.

I subsequently tried both & had little or no benefit from the DMSO, but did benefit from the Melatonin. I found a dosage of 1 MG., once a day at night worked best, and it took about a week to start to see some benefit. The benefit was a reduced level of pain, but most important, almost complete elimination of the diarrhea I had. It was a slow process, with improvement showing up each day.

So, I thank you for taking the time to get the word out about these two products.

I also have a science background, and started to think about how Melatonin was working. I subscribe to the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients. This is a magazine that is devoted to alternative medicine, but is very professional in their approach. In any case, in the current issue, 1999, #195, page 37 is an article by Dr. Alan Gaby regarding Melatonin. In the article is mentioned the fact that Melatonin is known to inhibit tumor necrosis factor (TNF). TNF is an important part of the inflammation process that your body uses to attack foreign substances. Now what is really interesting about this, is that it is a known fact that all Crohn's patients have a very high level of TNF. Actually, the most potent recently released FDA approved drug for Crohn's, is something called Remicade, made by Centacor. Remicade works by eliminating TNF and has been shown in many clinical trials to have a marked beneficial effect on Crohn's. It would be very interesting to investigate if Melatonin is in fact eliminating TNF & if DMSO also works this way.

Again thanks for providing the Melatonin information since it has been a big help to me.

Should you find out anything regarding TNF & Melatonin, I would love to hear from you.

Best Regards,

Chuck Berger

My Response/Comments/Thoughts: This e-mail caused me to revisit thinking about Crohn's Disease which I had not done in many months. I had the following thoughts.

PROPOSED TWO DISCRETELY DIFFERENT MECHANISMS FOR CAUSING CROHN'S DISEASE, DICTATING TWO QUITE DIFFERENT TREATMENT PROTOCOLS

The information presented in this e-mail is new to me. It introduces the possibility that there are (at least) two discretely different causes of Crohn's Disease, each responding well to quite different treatment approaches, for very fundamental biochemical reasons. I have been long aware that there are those that respond well to DMSO and those that don't. And the distinction is quite sharp. The question is why? And, can this understanding lead to more successful approaches to treatment?

1) Those that respond to DMSO:

In this case the primary trigger is anemia. The anemia signals the intestinal cells to convert more inactive iron to active, soluble iron so it can be transported to the bone marrow to produce more hemoglobin. However, there is a defective iron transport system which allows the soluble iron to stack up in the intestinal cells. This catalyzes the Haber-Weiss reaction (to excess) causing a high rate of production of hydroxyl radicals, which in turn cause excessive damage to the intestinal cells. It also prevents the correction of the primary cause, the anemia. The DMSO enhances the iron transport, reducing the immediate attack on the intestinal cells, and promoting the more gradual correction of the anemia. Once the anemia is corrected, the Crohn's Disease inflammation remains corrected, without the need for more DMSO, until the next incidence of anemia.

Transdermal application of vitamin B12 and folic acid in DMSO: For all those suffering from Crohn's Disease and particularly this case, I would suggest that you read my Health Notes on Anemia, Vitamin B12 and DMSO. It would appear that dissolving vitamin B12 and folic acid in DMSO and applying it to the skin (transporting it in through the skin) would be a profound help. All with Crohn's Disease have severely damaged intestines, greatly inhibiting vitamin B12 and folic acid absorption, which will cause anemia. The transdermal application will bypass this obstacle and bring the vitamins into the blood directly through the skin.

Could the anemia be caused by atmospheric nitrus oxide destroying vitamin B12 in the body, which in turn causes the Crohn's Disease? See the Health Note on Vitimin B12.

For this cause, one would expect that women would be the more vulnerable than men and would be more likely than to respond to DMSO.

2) Those that respond to Melatonin (or the drug Remicade):

In this case the primary trigger is a food allergy, or a "leaky gut". Foreign proteins from foods manage to penetrate the protective layer of the gut, before they get broken down by the digestive enzymes, and trigger an allergic/inflammatory response. (Such an immune reaction is commonly triggered by protein molecules and rarely triggered by carbohydrates.) The TNF plays a role in this response. It may actively cause damage, or simply be an indicator of the inflammation.

It is common for the body to invoke an inflammation response to foreign invaders, such as pathogens. (The immune system often sees large protein molecules as invaders, much like pathogens and reacts the same.) The inflammation response is the body's approach to providing a very rapid defense, which is not highly specific. It is the initial emergency response to control the situation that provides time for a more specific defense to be developed. Because it is not very specific, it can also attack some normal cells which get sacrificed in the process. In the extreme, the attack on normal cells becomes the dominant damage mechanism. Thus, it would give the appearance of an autoimmune disease, when it is really an inflammation response. This has led some researchers to conclude that Crohn's Disease is an autoimmune disease when it really isn't.

Consistent with this theory, it would appear that both Melatonin and Remicade have the ability to suppress this inflammation response as indicated by both of them having the capability of reducing TNF.

For this cause mechanism one would expect an equal distribution between men and women.

APPROACHES TO PREVENTION

1. SELECTIVE DIET: This introduces another approach to prevention; selective diet. I am certain that this is not so new to many CD sufferers. However, I would like to draw attention to a recently published book "Eat Right 4 Your Type" by Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo, (1996). The underlying theory behind this book is that people with different blood types have different immunological responses to different foods. Each blood type has a set of foods that they are compatible with and a set that they are not. This is related to the evolution of the different blood types in times when different diets predominated. It also gets specific enough to allow an individual to take action. It may not be perfect, but it presents a good start, based on some scientific data.

The premise makes some sense, and it is right on the mark when addressing this proposed cause of Crohn's Disease. I would thus suggest the people with this problem read this book and initiate your own experiments, refining the specific diet to meet your own specific biochemistry.

2. PREDIGESTING (HYDROLYZING) THE PROTEIN BEFORE CONSUMPTION: If the food-allergy/leaky-gut theory presented above is correct, and I believe it is, then proper food processing could eliminate the disease at its source, preventing it from ever happening. Thus, eliminating the need for any drugs.

First, it should be understood that a protein molecule must be relatively large to cause an immune response once it enters the blood. Protein molecules are composed of a long chain of amino acids connected together, with different protein molecules having different lengths and sequences. However, they are all constructed from the same 20 amino acids. These amino acids do not cause an immune reaction for at least two reasons: They are recognized as "self" and they are too small. If the protein molecules in the food are first disassembled into their individual amino acids before consumption, no immune response will happen when the resulting amino acids are transported into the blood from the intestine. Also, since they will still be the building blocks your body needs to make protein, their protein nutritional value will not be diminished. In practice, it is not necessary to decompose the protein molecules all the way to individual amino acids. The same effect can be achieved even if the decomposition still leaves some amino acids connected in small chains a few amino acids long (called peptides).

The process of disassembling the protein molecules is called hydrolysis. It is the exact reverse of the process your body uses to construct protein molecules from individual amino acids. In the construction process, one amino acid is connected to another by removing a hydrogen atom from one and a hydroxyl radical from the other. The hydrogen and hydroxyl radicals combine to form a water molecule and the free bonds on the amino acids unite, binding them together. This is repeated many times, adding one amino acid after the next, forming the protein molecule. The process is carefully controlled by enzymes that determine the rate of protein synthesis and exactly which proteins are synthesized.

Hydrolysis simply reverses this process. A water molecule is split and added back to the same bond locations, recreating the original free amino acids, and consuming the water molecule.

HOME METHODS FOR ACHIEVING HYDROLYSIS (PROTEIN DISASSEMBLY)

1. Digestive enzymes: Digestive enzymes catalyze this disassembly process in your intestine, making free amino acids which are then absorbed into the blood. Thus, consuming supplemental digestive enzymes with your food should help greatly and may be sufficient to reverse or control The Crohn's Disease.

2. Boiling in water: Digestive enzymes will be slow to take effect in your intestine and thus may not be totally effective (in time). However digestive enzymes are not required to hydrolyze protein (or carbohydrate) molecules. If foods are boiled in water, hydrolysis will take place. In general, the longer the boiling, the greater degree the proteins are disassembled.

3. Crock Pot: A crock pot has been designed to allow one to keep foods close to boiling for many hours. This would be the next step towards further improving the protein disassembly process.

4. Pressure Cooker: The most effective approach achieving the greatest degree of hydrolysis would be to cook the foods in a pressure cooker. This allows the water to reach a higher temperature before it boils. Pressure cookers are well known to be able to greatly shorted cooking times, for the same reason. One could experiment with a pressure cooker for any particular food to discover how long it takes to hydrolyze the food to where its proteins no longer produce an adverse reaction.

I would suggest the following starting point: Start with a can of soup, add water and vegetables, and cook in the pressure cooker. The time of cooking required to obtain adequate hydrolysis of the protein is unknown. It is up to you to determine this. Thus, cook for a while. Cool down and try the soup. If you still have a negative, inflammation reaction, return the soup to the pressure cooker and cook some more. Repeat this until you no longer have an inflammation reaction. This will only have to be done a few times before you know how long to cook in the begining.

I would also suggest including at least some soy beans in the list of added vegetables. They have been found to be exceptionally high in nutritional value.

Protein Sources in Foods:

There may be a misimpression that meats provide proteins and vegetables do not. This is not true. All living cells must have some protein molecules to perform numerous essential tasks. Meats have a high concentration of protein and vegetables have a much lower concentration. Depending on the vegetable, the protein may invoke an allergic response as severe as meats can evoke even though it is in much lower concentration. Thus, vegetables will have to be thoroughly boiled also.

Boiling vegetables is usually avoided because there is a common belief that vegetables are more nutritious raw or near raw. This may be true sometimes but not always. In fact, it has been reported that for some vegetables, cooking enhances their nutritional value. However, for people with Crohn's Disease, eliminating the damage to the intestine, thus improving nutrient absorption, will outweigh any nutrient loss due to extensive cooking. The primary risk of loss is likely to be nutrients dissolving in the water and being dumped out. This could be minimized by consuming the water phase, or steaming the vegetables (for a long time). However, simple chemistry dictates that cooking the food in the liquid phase (instead of steam) predicts a more effective hydrolysis of the protein. The water is a reactant, not just a heat transfer agent, and simple chemistry predicts that as the reactant concentration increases, the production of the product (hydrolyzed protein) will go more to completion. The cook will have to work out the details. Taking the soup approach presented above solves this problem.

SOME FEEDBACK

I have discussed this basic cooking approach with a number of people with Crohn's Disease as well as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). In every case the individuals have independently discovered that boiling vegetables for a long time will convert them from being irritating to their intestines to something that causes no problem. This is a small sample, but when it is combined with what makes technical sense, it warrants others trying it.

UPDATE, 11/99 SUMMARY

It is likely that there are two different causes of Crohn's Disease, anemia and food allergies. The intestinal damage mechanism is quite different for each. It is also reasonable to expect these two damage mechanisms to be interactive. Once one starts, it is likely to initiate the other. Both can be addressed without drugs. Anemia can be addressed with transdermal B12 & folic acid in DMSO and food allergy can be addressed by pressure cooking foods. I would suspect that someone with Crohn's Disease may want to do both at the same time.

Most importantly, these approaches address the primary cause of the disease, stopping it or preventing it from starting. They don't just attempt to reduce the damage or pain while the disease continues.

UPDATE, 1/00

I just received this e-mail and was given permission to post it.

Subject: Crohns/Sparx

Sent: 1/28/20 10:03 PM

From: sally.spalding@ac.com

To: krysalis@value.net

Dr. Gregg,

I spoke with you several years ago, in relation to Crohns Disease. I have been taking Melatonin for three years and have had no on-set of the illness since. I can not even express how this has dramatically changed my life.

Yesterday, I received a note from a friend who had just been diagnosed with CD and quickly went home to look up your name and number. I sent her the link to your website today.

I would also like to order some Sparx. Can you please contact me for sending instructions.

Thanks again for everything!

Sally

P.S. It was the melatonin that helped, did not have much success with the DMSO.