Q. What about other forms of medication? Over the years we have heard about a great many. Are these still in use?
A. In some cases, yes, and on other cases, not altogether. For some time a drug called carbenoxolone sodium appeared to have a beneficial effect on gastric ulcers. It seemed to relieve ulcers in the stomach more than duodenal ones where it was rapidly destroyed. A time-release capsule was developed, but never became popular. What is more, it produced side effects which many doctors thought made the risks of use, as the first-line attack drug, not really worthwhile.
Although modestly effective, it produced fluid retention (called oedema), elevated blood pressure, and sometimes it caused the body to retain potassium to seriously high levels. Although it was possible to give other drugs to counteract these adverse effects, it was soon overtaken by the development of newer, more effective drugs. So today, whilst it is available, it is not used very often, in contrast to the newer drugs which act more rapidly and have fewer adverse side effects.
Q. What about the so-called anti-cholinergics? These once held pride of place in the prescribing habits of many doctors.
A. Certainly they did; for several years they were extremely popular. They probably reduced acid production and so relieved pain. Some believe that in cases resistant to the histamine H2-receptor antagonists, the added use of the anticholinergics may be useful.
The drugs were removed from the general prescribing list in Australia in 1976, the same year as cimetidine became available in Britain for general prescribing. ‘Tagamet’ became available in Australia soon after, so that as one drug vanished, another better one rose to fill its place.
Q. What about belladonna preparations? These seemed to be pre-eminent once.
A. They had their day also. Belladonna was often used as an additive to ulcer therapy. But, like the anticholinergics, it gradually lost out to the newcomers. Some doctors may still use it but in the main it has almost become lost in antiquity! Zinc, in small amounts in capsule form, was also used by a small number of doctors. This appeared to have some healing quality and improve healing rate but it has never taken off in a big way and it does not seem likely to.
Q. What is the current view on simple, old fashioned rest for an ulcer patient?
A. It is well known that a certain number of ulcers will heal irrespective of what line of treatment is involved. Rest has long been known to be part of this. At present many doctors still recommend it. In fact, sending an ulcer patient to hospital, whether he rests there or not, is also believed to be effective treatment.
It may be the ‘placebo’ effect — the belief that as something active is being done, this gives a high chance of a good result. One might call it mind over matter but doctors believe the placebo effect is significant, especially if the individual has faith in his treatment and believes a cure is forthcoming. For centuries the scriptures have been saying ‘as a man thinketh in his mind, so is he.’ It is salutary food for thought.
Q. What about the use of vitamins and minerals?
A. Although many western doctors have a disparaging attitude towards vitamin supplements and minerals, claiming that a good all round general diet will supply all the necessary ones, many others, specially those researching in American centres, have different views. They believe that the body, specially in the depleted state (common with ulcer patients), benefits substantially from additional vitamins and minerals. These should be tailor made for the individual, but in general will include increased daily doses of the vitamin B complex and vitamin C. Some advocate up to 100 mg of the main components of the vitamin B complex, and anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 mg a day of vitamin C, preferably in the readily absorbable calcium ascorbate form. Added minerals covering zinc, magnesium, chromium, molybdenum, calcium, manganese and others are often suggested. These minerals are often in the orotate or chelate form which makes them more readily absorbed by the blood stream from the intestinal system. Various commercial compounds are available which contain these ingredients in suitable amounts.
*18/61/2*
Auto-immune disease is the name given to the process whereby the body begins to produce antibodies against its own tissues. This constitutes over-sensitivity and erratic behavior of the immune system taken to the nth degree, as under normal conditions the immune system recognises the body’s own tissues as OK and not a threat.
This antigen-antibody reaction usually attacks the joints (rheumatoid arthritis), the joints and heart combined (rheumatic fever), the skin and blood vessels (systemic lupus erythematosis) or the muscles and joints of the lower back (ankylosing spondylitis). Sometimes it attacks the thyroid gland (acute thyroiditis), causing it to be either over- or under-active. A disrupted thyroid gland further unbalances the metabolism.
Because allergies are carried in the blood they can, and often do, migrate around the body. The random coming and going of symptoms that is so confusing to both patient and physician can be caused by this. Many people are deluded into thinking they have outgrown their allergies when their symptoms disappear in this way. They seldom equate the development of new symptoms with the allergy that caused their old symptoms. As whacky and variable as this process is there are some common patterns.
Those who mysteriously lose (grow out of) their asthma frequently develop eczema and those who had itchy skin and hayfever as children frequently develop acne as adults. Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security if, without treatment, your symptoms suddenly disappear. The probability of your untreated allergy emerging somewhere else, as something else, is very high.
*18/18/9*
Until about 40 years ago most doctors believed that inheritance was a major factor in causing epilepsy. This belief is still strong amongst the population at large. Doctors are often told ‘It can’t be epilepsy because there is nothing like that in the family,. These views were held in the past with such force in some states of America and in some Scandinavian countries that it was illegal for people with epilepsy to marry. It is certainly true that genetic factors do play a part in epilepsy, but not an overwhelming part.
There are some genetic diseases in which inheritance is through a dominant gene. Genes come in pairs, one from each parent. One member of the pair may always be dominant in influencing the structure or biochemistry of the offspring. If a child or adult has the gene, then, in broad terms he or she has the disease, although there are variations in the severity of the disease. One of the parents; carrying the gene will therefore not only show the effects of the gene himself or herself, but will transmit the effective gene to, on average, half his or her children. Tuberous sclerosis and neurofibromatosis, both disorders affecting the structure of nerve cells and surrounding tissue, are transmitted in this way.
There are other genetic diseases in which the gene is recessive. In recessive inheritance, the effects of the gene are only expressed if a child has a double dose of the relevant gene—one abnormal gene from each parent. The parents, although themselves carriers, do not show the abnormality as the other member of their pair of genes is normal. There are certain rare disorders of metabolism of the brain, collectively known as the lipidoses, which are inherited by recessive genes. Fatty substances known as lipids are important constituents of the membranes surrounding the nerve cells. A disorder of the structure and function of the cell membrane may well lead to paroxysmal discharge of nerve cells—an epileptic seizure.
It must be stressed that these diseases are rare. They have been mentioned first only because the mechanism of their inheritance is most clearly understood.
There is, however, also good evidence that primary generalized idiopathic epilepsy is also inherited. In order to explain this, it is easier to trace back from a child with epilepsy to his parents, rather than first considering the chances of a prospective parent with epilepsy having an epileptic child. The characteristic EEG is seen in about 40 per cent of brothers and sisters of children with primary generalized epilepsy, even if these brothers and sisters have not had any apparent seizures. That is to say, the abnormality which causes the abnormal EEG record is inherited, but this abnormality is not necessarily expressed in clinically apparent seizures. A smaller proportion of the parents of children with primary generalized epilepsy will also show the characteristic EEG changes. We know from following the children with these EEG changes that the characteristic discharges become much less frequent with age, so the absence of discharge in adult life does not mean that the parent did not have unrecorded and unapparent discharges in childhood. From mathematical studies of the proportion of the abnormal EEG records of many families with primary generalized epilepsy, it is possible to calculate that the pattern of inheritance is probably that of a dominant gene.
Energetic research studies are ongoing in several centres to identify the gene. It will probably turn out that there is more than one gene, each giving a similar clinical picture. This has already been shown to be true for the much more clearly defined disorder of tuberouss sclerosis, a disorder in which there are nests of abnormally developed nerve cells and their supporting cells (known as glial cells), some of them calcified and some sufficiently large to be seen on a brain scan. It is now known that two dominant genes on separate chromosomes can result in what appears to be an identical picture. (A chromosome is the microscopically visible structure within the nucleus of a cell which contains the genetic material—the DNA.)
As we have already explained, for a child to show an abnormality in cases of dominant inheritance, only one member of the pair of relevant genes (one from the father and one from the mother) needs to be abnormal. However, the effects of other gene pairs may to some extent succeed in suppressing this gene from expressing itself in obvious seizures. This means that about only one third of the children to whom it is transmitted will have seizures. Furthermore, even if the gene is expressed in seizures, the result may only be a few absence seizures in childhood.
The variability in clinical expression of the genetic abnormality accounts for the occurrence of primary generalized epilepsy in a child of parents neither of whom has ever had a known seizure. In such an instance one assumes that one parent does indeed have the gene, and, had an EEG been recorded in his or her childhood, the typical EEG discharge would have been seen.
Another aspect is the inheritance of a convulsive threshold. Any one of us can be made to have a seizure ii the stimulus is strong enough, and some of us do at lower levels of stimulus—at lower thresholds—than others. The inheritance of this level of threshold is probably
polygenic—that is to say, several genes, some recessive and some dominant, interact to produce the final result. Another example of polygenic inheritance is height. Tall parents tend to have tall children, but height is not determined by a single gene.
This inherited convulsive threshold is a background, as it were, to the whole of the area. It influences even those cases in which epilepsy clearly seems to be secondary to some obvious cause, such as a severe head injury causing local cortical scarring. Head injuries obviously are not inherited as such. Nevertheless there is a slight tendency for those who develop epilepsy after head injury to have a family history of epilepsy more often than those who do not develop epilepsy after what may be regarded as a comparable injury. What is being inherited here, through a number of different genes, is a lower-than-average convulsive threshold. The children of such head-injured parents are not likely to have seizures unless some additional cerebral damage affects them. It would be an unlikely family in which two members suffered severe head injuries, so that the risk of ‘inheriting’ epilepsy from a parent with epilepsy secondary to some structural brain damage is small. It follows that one good reason for a paediatrician or neurologist to do his or her best to find a ’cause’ for epilepsy is so that they can best advise about the risk of brothers or sisters or daughters or sons being affected.
There is, however, one group of people in whom inherited and acquired characteristics interplay in a complex way. The tendency to febrile convulsions is inherited, through one or more genes.
A febrile convulsion, if very prolonged (lasting longer than 20-30 minutes), may rarely damage one or other temporal lobes of the brain through lack of oxygen occurring during the seizure. The scar in the temporal lobe may then act as a focus from which paroxysmal discharge—seizures—spread in later childhood and adult life.
The first duty of a doctor asked by a young couple, one of whom has epilepsy, about the chances of any child of theirs having epilepsy, is to characterize the seizure type as accurately as possible, using the description of the seizures and the EEC if it is clear that the prospective parent is having partial seizures, of generalized seizures which have a clear focal onset, either clinically or demonstrated on the EEG then, these seizures are almost certainly secondary to some area of cortical scarring or developmental abnormalities. The risk of any child of this marriage having epilepsy is only moderately higher than the risk of the population at large. It is, however, somewhat higher than the risk of the average child because of the inheritance of the convulsive threshold. If it is clear that the prospective parent has primary generalized epilepsy, then we have to say that about half his or her children will carry the gene, but only about one child in six will have definite seizures. The chances of epilepsy being a significant problem in the life of a child of a parent with primary generalized epilepsy is no more than of the order of five per cent, the others perhaps having only a minor EEG abnormality if that is specifically looked for.
A small fraction of the genetic material (DNA) is carried outside the nucleus in small particles in the cell known as mitochondria. These are only derived from the maternal ovum, not being present in sperm. There are therefore a few rare disorders in which inheritance is only through the maternal line. Some of these are associated with epilepsy.
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14
THE PROGRAM OF BIOLOGICAL TREATMENTS OF ARTHRITIS: WITHDRAWAL OF DRUGS
0 Comments | Posted by admin in Arthritis
Because conventional drugs used in medical treatment of arthritis are, as a rule, only aimed at masking and suppressing the symptoms, they naturally have no place in a program of biological treatments. Pain is an important symptom, a signal, which is initiated by the body’s own defensive mechanism to attract necessary help and assistance for its healing activity. To suppress and mask pain, without finding out why it is there and trying to eliminate the underlying causes of it, is contrary to the philosophy of biological medicine. It is of vital importance to realize that the various symptoms of disease, such as pain, swelling, stiffness, fever, tiredness, loss of appetite, etc. are not negative phenomena which have to be eliminated and suppressed, but they are positive, constructive symptoms initiated by the body’s own healing mechanism in its effort to restore health. When this is clearly understood, then the wise doctor will not waste his own and his patient’s time masking the symptoms and providing temporary relief. He will adopt a positive attitude which will aim at eliminating and correcting the underlying causative factors of arthritis and supporting the body’s own recuperative powers.
Even such a drug as cortisone, although it will temporarily activate and stabilize the chemical balance of the tissues, will never correct the initial disturbance and will eventually cause more damage by undermining and impairing the body’s own corrective measures. Therefore, cortisone, like any other toxic drug, should be used only in a situation of extreme emergency.
Consequently, the first rule of a biological program is complete withdrawal of all drugs. In the great majority of cases this presents no problems. Naturally, withdrawal of pain-killing drugs will cause a certain amount of discomfort for the first few days, but on a new biological program the patient soon will be pain-free, even without pain-killing drugs.
The consensus of opinion of doctors who use biological methods in their practice is that the prospects of achieving a betterment and cure of arthritis with the help of biological treatments is in inverse relationship to the extent and intensity of the drug treatment the patient received previously. Prolonged use of drugs will eventually suppress and break down the body’s own defense and healing mechanisms causing severe chemical and hormonal imbalance. The disease will then be pushed further and further towards the condition where it will be completely incurable.
Therefore, in order to obtain lasting results the withdrawal of all drugs is imperative.
*17/176/2*
As pregnancy advances, more and more demands are made upon the mother’s reserves of iron. During the last twelve weeks a considerable amount of iron is transferred from the mother to the baby. It is essential that these depleted stores be made up to normal.
Even during normal non-pregnant life, women run a greater risk of having reduced stores of iron. Menstruation each month reduces the supply. Although a certain amount of this is made up during the subsequent month, it is very common for the level to be less than normal even early in pregnancy.
For this reason, the doctor usually orders a haemoglobin examination at an early date in pregnancy. The haemoglobin is the red material in the red blood cells, and iron is used in its manufacture. Unless this is present in normal amounts, the body (including the foetus) is unable to gain sufficient supplies of oxygen, and difficulties may be encountered.
With more severe forms of anaemia (as this condition is called), symptoms will appear. Fatigue ‘more than would normally be expected), shortness of breath, a pale complexion and swelling of the tissues (referred to as oedema) may occur.
These are very important symptoms, indicating an immediate need for treatment.
Treatment is generally very successful. It is usually given in a form that can be taken orally. Many different forms are available. Some patients are sensitive to some iron salts, and changes are necessary. But usually a certain brand is available that is suitable and can be tolerated satisfactorily.
Sometimes another chemical called folic acid is in short supply, and this may be given in conjunction. It is also needed to keep the blood in good order.
By sticking to a sensible iron-rich eating routine, the risks of anaemia are far less.
An iron-rich diet is usually a vitamin-rich diet as well. If the mother-to-be acquires this naturally, the need for medication is often reduced.
The original blood test carried out at the first consultation is often repeated at the thirty-second and thirty-sixth weeks of pregnancy, for these are critical times when iron utilization is high. Any deficiencies must be brought back to normal as promptly as possible.
*17/76/5*
14
ADDING ST JOHN’S WORT TO CURRENT ANTI-DEPRESSANT MEDICATIONS
0 Comments | Posted by admin in Anti Depressants-Sleeping Aid
If one treats a large number of depressed patients, as I do, the use of anti-depressant combinations is standard operating procedure, as the anti-depressants frequently don’t work when administered individually. If one has to be depressed, the late 20th century is not such a bad time for it as there is an ever-increasing array of available medications that act on different elements of the neurones responsible for transmitting the signals that regulate our moods. The skilful clinician, working in collaboration with an observant patient, can mix and blend these medications in such a way as to maximize their benefits while minimizing their side-effects.
St John’s Wort appears to work very well in combination with all anti-depressants except for the MAOIs, such as Parnate or
Nardil, where adding them can be dangerous. This is not to say that medications should be mindlessly shaken into a cocktail in full dosage. After all, if these medications can interact with one another in positive ways that enhance their anti-depressant effects, they also have the potential to enhance one another’s side-effects. When mixing medications it is important therefore to move more cautiously with dosages and timing. Certainly, such medication combinations should not be tried on one’s own but rather under the supervision of a good doctor.
When properly handled, I have seen people manage to decrease the dosage of anti-depressants that were giving them unpleasant side-effects, and add in St John’s Wort instead. For example, Fred, a 52-year-old computer scientist, wrote to tell me that he had added St John’s Wort to the anti-depressants he was previously using, which had been helpful in removing his feelings of ‘doom and gloom’ but did not completely resolve his problems. According to Fred, St John’s Wort ‘takes the edge off feelings of anxiety and depression and flips the switch from negative to positive’. He was able to reduce his dosage of anti-depressant medication from 450 mg to 300 mg per day and, in addition, noticed that he did not need to be quite so precise as to when he took it. Before starting St John’s Wort he had observed that ‘If I missed a pill by one or two hours, I’d get very tired and the glass started looking half empty instead of half full. By taking 250 mg of St John’s Wort with 150 mg of my usual anti-depressant, I can delay taking the next dose by two to four hours.’
Besides helping Fred get by with less anti-depressant medication and space the pills out at wider intervals, the addition of St John’s Wort also gave him a more sustained feeling of well-being. As he put it, T feel like good things will happen – a feeling that I am OK – not perfect – but me. I sense life is going to get better.’
I have similarly observed in my own patients the highly beneficial interactions between St John’s Wort and other antidepressants, sometimes subtle, sometimes very robust. Although I have read of people who have experienced problems with such combinations, such as jitteriness or increased blood pressure, to date I have not observed them in my own patients, perhaps because of my practice of altering dosages of medications gradually, which enables one to detect potential problems early before they become too unpleasant.
Many of my patients are on complicated combinations of anti-depressants and I have been pleasantly surprised to find that the addition of St John’s Wort may nevertheless provide additional anti-depressant protection even in people with depressions that have been hard to reverse. Sometimes the addition of the herb has been so helpful that it has been possible to decrease the dose of some of the other medications or even to remove one or more of them, thereby simplifying the overall medication regimen. As always, the key to successfully combining medications – and St John’s Wort is no exception in this regard – is to change dosages slowly and observe carefully for any untoward effects.
Remember: If you are on a MAOI such as Parnate or Nardil, do not take St John’s Wort. Also, if you have discontinued an MAOI, wait at least two weeks before starting St John’s Wort.
*17/75/2*
14
ANXIETY IN THE BODY: PALPITATION
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One of the commonest symptoms of anxiety is the abnormal awareness of the action of our heart. Palpitation is a normal accompaniment of a response to danger. In this case the increased action of our heart serves to prepare us to meet the threat. However, as soon as the danger passes the action of our heart returns to normal and we cease to be aware of it. But when we suffer from anxiety, the unpleasant awareness of the action of our heart is often constantly with us.
Besides the persistence of the palpitation there is another factor. In our normal response to real danger our heart does in fact beat more strongly. But in the palpitation of anxiety there may be little actual overactivity of the heart, and the unpleasant awareness is due to our hypersensitivity to the normal beating of our heart rather than to overactivity of the organ.
The feeling of palpitation focuses our attention on our heart. We are all familiar with the dangers of heart attacks from coronary thrombosis. We soon come to feel that something is wrong with our heart. To reassure us our doctor takes an electrocardiogram and tells us that it shows our heart to be quite normal and that the palpitation is only due to our nervous condition. But we are not reassured. A lurking feeling remains that there is something wrong. In fact, it is hard to be reassured so long as our anxiety is still with. us.
A few years ago I saw an industrial tycoon, a man of strikingly pleasant personality and such exceptional ability that in a matter of a decade he had amassed a great fortune. But over the previous two and a half years he had suffered from pain over his heart and quite violent palpitation; and as a result was unable to enjoy the material success he had achieved.
In the manner of the real tycoon he was determined at all costs to get himself fixed up. He was not sure whether it was ten or twelve cardiologists that he had consulted in the various capital cities of Australia. He had gone to America to the most famous cardiological clinic in that country. He had been treated by a psychiatrist in America and by three psychiatrists in Australia.
“You can tell when there is something wrong with your heart, you can feel it,” he asserted.
There was obviously no point in having a head-on collision with such a man, so I merely said, “Anyway, you would be more comfortable if you were more relaxed.” And we went on from there.
One day about eighteenth months later I was driving home, when I caught sight of him in his car. In typical style he shouted, “Never better in my life.”
I must also tell you something of the other side. Last week I saw a healthy, athletic student who was becoming crippled by pain over his heart. Two leading cardiologists had assured him that his heart was perfectly normal. He was really brought to me against his wishes, by his father. He is convinced there is something wrong with his heart. He will not listen to me. He refuses to come back. Yet I am sure that if he would only do what I suggest he would soon be free of the pain.
Rejection by the patient like this does not happen often, but it is the most common cause of failure.
*17/57/2*
Breast milk colitis is a strong case for giving baby formulas a try. Many a pediatrician and parent has witnessed an improvement in a baby’s allergies (often hives, eczema, asthma, nappy rash and breast milk colitis) when the baby is taken off the breast and put on a formula. This is because that particular formula didn’t contain the specific allergens carried in that particular mother’s milk. Unfortunately the erroneous conclusion that all formulas are good for all babies all of the time is drawn from this.
The facts are that not all babies improve on formulas. Some babies are allergic to the cow’s and soymilk they’re made from. Some are allergic to the malt and other inclusions and because of these sensitivities don’t improve when taken off the breast. If the baby has contracted a Candida
yeast infection from the mother, the sugar in the formula will so aggravate the Candida infection that the symptoms will become worse. If the Candida infection is only mild it will take time for the symptoms to flare. Because an initial improvement was witnessed on the formula the emerging symptoms of a developing Candida problem
are not attributed to the formula and the baby is invariably kept on it with no cause ever found for its suffering.
Formulas are not the answer. By doing this I he baby will lose his/her allergies, won’t need formulas and won’t need to be on solid food before the age of ten months.
Breast feeding so effectively boosts the baby’s immunity as to reduce the incidence of allergy by 25 per cent‘. This fact was discovered by research doctors in Finland who followed the lives of babies born in 1975 through to the present day. Eczema, asthma and food allergies had developed in 65 per cent of 17 year olds who had received little or no breast feeding. In those breast fed to six months the incidence was 40 per cent. These findings received such acclaim in the scientific world they were written up in the prestigious Lancet medical journal.
*17/18/9*
One aspect of human nature is to search for causal links between events. The onset of epileptic seizures in a previously healthy child or adult results in great heart-searching in the family, and raking over past events in an attempt to find some reasons. Yet it has to be admitted that the most careful medical assessment of past events or current state allows a paediatrician or neurologist to assign a cause or causes of epilepsy in only a minority of subjects, and then often on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
Take head injury, for example. If a child is known to have cut her head falling in the playground, and then has her first seizure two weeks later, many parents will link the two events, and attribute the onset of epilepsy to this minor head injury on no basis other than coincidence in time. A minor head injury at work followed some weeks later by a first seizure unfortunately may lead to litigation between employer and employee, as the latter holds that he ‘was perfectly all right before the accident’. The association of events in time is, however, no evidence of cause. Severe head injuries may, however, result in the development of epilepsy, so-called
post-traumatic epilepsy. Somewhere in the continuum of mild to moderate to severe head injuries there must be a zone where there is reasonable doubt as to whether epilepsy was or was not caused by the injury.
The same arguments apply when assessing the effects of a difficult birth and the possible relationship of that to the subsequent development of epilepsy. There is no doubt that a very difficult labour, especially if the baby is small, may cause significant brain damage, severe learning difficulties, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy may result. However, after many difficult or prolonged labours the child develops perfectly normally and twins are no more likely to develop seizures than single births. It used to be thought that forceps or breech deliveries might be blamed for the subsequent development of epilepsy. However, a follow-up study of all children born in one week showed that epilepsy was no more likely to develop after such births than after normal unassisted deliveries. It is now known that in many children born with cerebral palsy or severe learning difficulties there are problems in cerebral development that precede birth. Although sometimes these may be visible on scanning, in other cases the abnormality is no more than a subtle disorder of organization of the developing nerve cells visible only microscopically in tissue obtained at surgical operation or after death. These may, however, be sufficient to cause seizures.
Having given these warnings against uncritically linking life events and the development of epilepsy, what are the factors which can be said, with a fair degree of confidence, to cause epilepsy? The causes are different at different ages. Some causes, such as a structural congenital brain abnormality may cause seizures in the neonatal period, and the abnormally organized brain may cause seizures throughout life, as is indicated by the long continuing arrow. Other causes occur only at one age, and their effect then ceases. Metabolic disturbances in the neonatal period, such as hypoglycaemia, are examples of this.
*16/188/2*
14
DISEASE SIGNS OF THE ORGANS-DISEASES OF THE GASTRO-INTESTINAL TRACT: B. INTESTINAL ZONE
0 Comments | Posted by admin in General health
Stomach and intestines have their iris positions in the first major zone, directly around the pupil. In contrast to the other organs they are concentrically arranged, and take in a third of the iris.
When looking at an iris, attention is first directed to the stomach and intestinal zones. In health the stomach and intestinal zones are of equal size. They take in a third of the iris and do not differ in essential colour and structure from each other. This normal form of the first major zone is very seldom found in these days.
Disturbances of the intestines are recognised in the course and colour of the iris-wreath.
1. Dilatations of the iris-wreath are often seen. If roundish, they suggest an intestinal atony, and these usually stem from incompletely cleared catarrhs of childhood. Dark spots in the dilatations are indications that the intestinal glands are no longer functioning. Patients with these signs had many colicky pains as children, with a history of always wanting to drink cold water ( = intestinal scrofula).
If the signs are more honeycomb-like, then one speaks of’ ‘wormnests’. That is to say, that the patients have suffered from worms. If worms are suspected, then other signs are searched for: undue activity of the pupils, dark rings under the eyes, signs of worms on the tongue, in the nose, and itching of the anus, etc.
Pointed white spokes of the iris-wreath which take in the second large zone are signs of intestinal colic.
2. A white iris-wreath is an indication for inflammation of the intestines. This inflammation often extends over into the lymph channels, to the fifth minor zone (mucous membrane zone). One can then observe thick radiating white lines from the wreath to the fifth minor zone, in which white clouds or flakes also appear.
3. A contraction of the iris-wreath arises because of pressure from the outside, and can be caused by organ displacement (e.g. floating kidney, enlarged liver) or by a tumour. A downward depression of the wreath is a sign of ptosis of stomach or intestines.
4. An expansion of the large intestine field in the direction of the heart area (left iris 10′-15′, right iris 45′-50′) enables one to diagnose ‘Roemheld’.
6. All iris signs which originate from the pupil and traverse the iris-wreath indicate a participation of the central nervous system in the disturbed condition.
7. If in the left iris one finds an iris-wreath with a pointed serrated margin, a sign of weakness in the heart area, and an adrenal sign, then a vegetative dystony is indicated. The patient is full of inner disturbances, with troubles here and there, without it being possible to define a clinical condition.
8. A square-shaped wreath always indicates a grave and incurable condition. Pancreas signs are always then to be found.
9. The appendix area lies in the right iris—from 33′-35′, directly at the wreath. In inflammatory states there shows a white sign = acute condition, or a yellow sign = chronic condition. One often observes in this area signs of adhesions, which go out from the intestine and reach to the peritoneum. They arise after chronic inflammations, as well as after badly healed appendicectomies, and can produce considerable disturbance.
A black spike in the caecal area signifies that the caecum has become functionally incapable and shrivelled. Black or dark lines which go over or under in an arc, indicate displacement of the caecum. Very often it becomes adherent to the gall-bladder, peritoneum, ovary, Fallopian tube, etc.
10.Strong dilatations of the intestinal zone from 25′-30′ in the left iris and from 30-35′ in the right iris, enable one to recognise the tendency to hernia. The iris-wreath is broken through at the point where the rupture ensues. If pain also appears, then white clouds in this area will point to an inflammatory state.
Small lacunae inside the iris-wreath indicate a disturbance in the gastro-intestinal secretions, arising from atony of the stomach and intestine musculature.
11.Special attention should be directed to the S. Romanum (Sigmoid flexure) and to the rectum. In many cases, the area for rectum, left iris 32-34′, shows a white discharge-sign, as an indication of mucous membrane catarrh. Often, the iris fibres in this area separate from one another, and indicate a sign of commencing weakness ( = atonic constipation).
Signs for haemorrhoids are seen in this area in the form of small dark spots. Apart from this, one not infrequently observes a very dark brown neurasthenic ring, and indications of stasis in the liver area, as symptoms of a portal congestion. With haemorrhoids, one usually finds very wrinkled eyelids. Interrogation reveals that these patients must often rub their eyes because they feel as if there were sand in them. A later indication of haemorrhoids is the presence of 2 red fleck in the lower eyelid. The more this fleck lies temporalwards, then the more analwards lie the haemorrhoids. The more it lies nasalwards, then the higher they lie.
*16/78/2*