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Dear
Colleagues: Last month I mentioned briefly how vitamin B12 helped to improve a patient's response to neural therapy. In my experience this is not an unusual occurrence, so this month I want to discuss vitamin B12's role in neural therapy in more detail. Vitamin B12 (or cobalamin) deficiency (with toxic metals, food sensitivities, malnutrition of various kinds, etc.) is on my short list of conditions that may impair or defeat neural therapy. Typically these factors come into consideration when a fading response to neural therapy occurs after an initially promising one. The absorption, biochemistry and physiology of cobalamin is exceedingly complex and beyond the scope of this newsletter. It is still a hot topic, even though vitamin B12 was discovered almost 90 years ago. Considerable research continues, particularly with regard to genetic factors that influence its absorption and utilization. A quick cruise through Pubmed using "vitamin B12 deficiency" as search words, leads me to two conclusions: (1) The major research focus of cobalamin deficiency is still hematological, (i.e. pernicious anaemia); (2) Cobalamin deficiency is a condition primarily of the very young and the old. This does not fit with what I am seeing in my practice. I am finding vitamin B12 deficiency in all ages and rarely is the haemoglobin level affected. Most of my B12 deficient patients are suffering from fatigue, depression, chronic pain or soft neurological symptoms. So, why the difference between the findings of medical academia and my practice?: This is a question I perhaps should have asked myself while in medical school 40 years ago. I attended a medical school that prided itself on its academic excellence. Its teaching hospitals attracted exotic cases and the most advanced medicine of the time was available for them. However with the academic rigour came a certain snootiness. I remember being taught that the referring physician was a "quack" if vitamin B12 was being prescribed without proper investigation. (Country docs of the time often prescribed vitamin B12 injections as "pick-me-ups" for their tired patients). Whether the injections helped or not did not matter in this environment. They were quacks because they had not measured the vitamin B12 levels! I did not question this orthodoxy until I came across a medical paper two decades later. In this article it was shown that vitamin B12 levels in the serum did not correspond to the levels in the central nervous system (van Tiggelen CJM et al. Vitamin B12 levels of cerebrospinal fluid in patients with organic mental disorder. J Orthomolecular Psychiatry 12:305-311, 1983.) Since measuring vitamin B12 levels in spinal fluid is not practical in most settings, one is left with a therapeutic trial to determine whether the patient needs vitamin B12. The country docs of yester-year were not so far off the mark! Around the same time I learned of an unusual treatment for sub-deltoid bursitis - a series of intramuscular vitamin B12 injections (1000 mcg cyanocobalamin) daily for about a week. This works most of the time and is an especially attractive alternative if a patient has bursitis in more than one location in the body. But it also demonstrated that high-dose and frequent B12 injections are harmless, and a response is obtained within a few days. So now my test for vitamin B12 deficiency is a therapeutic trial of daily cyanocobalamin injections (1000 mcg) for a week. I teach the patients to inject themselves and even the most needle-phobic seem to be able to do it. If the patient does feel better, the interference field in question is often found to have disappeared. And if not, it is often possible to resume neural therapy with better chance of success. At the least, the patient may benefit from improved energy, mood and sense of well-being. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next introductory neural therapy course on November 12th and 13th, 2010 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. http://www.neuraltherapybook.com/NTcourses.php. Three-day introductory neural therapy course in Sydney, Australia March 9-11, 2011. For more information contact George Stylian DO: 02 9524 4620, 0425 237 995 or [email protected]; FAX: 02 9525 9998 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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