How I cured my glomerulonephritis
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 9:47 am
I was diagnosed at the end of 2012 by the Alfred Hospital Renal Clinic (Melbourne, Australia). I had cured an autoimmune disease before (ankylosing spondylitis) so wasn't unduly worried about retiring GN. As it turned out the task took 18 months, a little longer than I expected.
In that time I went from a urine protein/creatinine level of 595 to "undetectable"; symptoms vanished fairly early in the piece.
For anyone's who's interested, this was the process. It's phrased in the form of advice to a friend whose daughter has just been diagnosed. (There were quite a few links in the original, but they don't appear to have come thru. I can send them to anyone who's interested.)
General:
1. Medicine doesn't know how to cure chronic & degenerative diseases, so it isn't wise to wait for answers on kidney disease from doctors. (If I did, I would probably still be sick.)
2. But medicine does have a near-monopoly on pathology testing - and those numbers are an excellent indication of progress. It's good to get familiar with your blood albumin number & your urine protein-creatinine number. I kept mine in a spreadsheet, & it was a continuing inspiration to watch the former rise and the latter fall. (My protein-creatinine fell from 595 to "undetectable" in 18 months; and my blood albumin rose from 18 to 43.) Symptoms (edema, frothy urine) also vanished.
3. The problem in curing any autoimmune disease is not a lack of solutions (there are more than enough) but a lack of will to apply them. The latter is always the roadblock - never the former.
Specific:
I'd think that the modern lifestyle is what causes kidney disease, as kidney disease isn't present in any of the studies I have seen of primitive tribes. It's an educated guess that the aspects of modern life most to blame are:
* Pro-autoimmune disease foods such as dairy & gluten grains (whose proteins the immune system thinks are enemy pathogens, & attacks). Other culprits are peas & beans (especially soy): depends on how hardline you want to get.
* Lack of exercise. Hunter-gatherer women (all our ancestors bar the last few) had a daily walking range of 8-20 km, & climbed trees, went after small game, & carried kids and bags of tubers everywhere; then made tools, & danced 3-4 nights a week.
* The other big thing that has changed since the Stone Age environment for which we were designed is that our chronic stress levels are way higher. So anything (yoga, meditation, therapy, TRE, moving to the country) that reduces those will benefit. Psycho-neuro-immunology has demonstrated many pathways leading from a stressful environment to various disease states.
My philosophy was to throw everything at the kidney disease, so once the above is in place you could also:
* Take the Chinese herbs that work against kidney disease. The main one is astragalus. Google astragalus nephritis & you'll see some papers & case studies of people who were cured of glomerulonephritis by astragalus alone. This paper discusses several other Chinese herbs used against kidney disease. I bought most of them (at Botanica in Glenferrie Road, plus maybe one or two online) and made a pot of herbal tea from them, which I drank through each day. My list was Astragalus, Dong quai (angelica sinensis) (don't use if on blood-thinners as it is a blood-thinner), T Wilfordii, Rhubarb (da huang), and L Wallichii. And nettle.
* Make a daily vegetable juice. (Plenty of carrot & apple will make it drinkable.) That's how Dr Sandra Cabot's grandfather cured her grandmother of nephritis - & was part of my cure too. Put garlic & tumeric in the juice, as these knock off all viruses, bacteria & fungi, & have lots of antioxidants. Oxidative stress is involved in kidney disease, and the antioxidants in garlic & tumeric will counter that.
* Green tea. Green tea's chief curative element is its "EGCGs". According to the literature, these "favorably affect the development of immune-mediated glomerulonephritis"..."reduced proteinuria and serum creatinine, and marked improvement in renal histology".) As green tea is cheap, easy to make & not bad to drink, it's another no-brainer.
* I took a spectrum of vitamins & minerals, just to make sure those bases were covered. One important one is vitamin D, deficiency of which sometimes occurs with nephritis. iHerb in the US is an excellent source of cheap online vitamins. They're quick & the freight is cheap.
Beyond the above, there are many more options. But budgets, time & tolerance are all limited: doing everything is impossible, & trying to do everything is probably counterproductive: life just gets too narrow to be enjoyable. However if further experiments are desired at some stage:
* There is some evidence that stomach enzymes such as Serrapeptase control kidney disease.
* Allergy testing might identify unsuspected allergens that make the autoimmune response worse. For example many people with autoimmune react badly to the nightshade family. (They never bothered me, but ______ could be different.)
* Acupuncture seems to address many problems that Medicine can't.
* The list goes on: Removing amalgam fillings and/or chelating out mercury (there is evidence that mercury causes autoimmune disease, and also it is directly nephro-toxic); fixing her body's methylation (detox) system with methyl supplements; taking strong probiotics to heal the gut, & thus stop leaky gut - the process by which food proteins escape into the bloodstream & provoke the autoimmune response... etcetera.
John
In that time I went from a urine protein/creatinine level of 595 to "undetectable"; symptoms vanished fairly early in the piece.
For anyone's who's interested, this was the process. It's phrased in the form of advice to a friend whose daughter has just been diagnosed. (There were quite a few links in the original, but they don't appear to have come thru. I can send them to anyone who's interested.)
General:
1. Medicine doesn't know how to cure chronic & degenerative diseases, so it isn't wise to wait for answers on kidney disease from doctors. (If I did, I would probably still be sick.)
2. But medicine does have a near-monopoly on pathology testing - and those numbers are an excellent indication of progress. It's good to get familiar with your blood albumin number & your urine protein-creatinine number. I kept mine in a spreadsheet, & it was a continuing inspiration to watch the former rise and the latter fall. (My protein-creatinine fell from 595 to "undetectable" in 18 months; and my blood albumin rose from 18 to 43.) Symptoms (edema, frothy urine) also vanished.
3. The problem in curing any autoimmune disease is not a lack of solutions (there are more than enough) but a lack of will to apply them. The latter is always the roadblock - never the former.
Specific:
I'd think that the modern lifestyle is what causes kidney disease, as kidney disease isn't present in any of the studies I have seen of primitive tribes. It's an educated guess that the aspects of modern life most to blame are:
* Pro-autoimmune disease foods such as dairy & gluten grains (whose proteins the immune system thinks are enemy pathogens, & attacks). Other culprits are peas & beans (especially soy): depends on how hardline you want to get.
* Lack of exercise. Hunter-gatherer women (all our ancestors bar the last few) had a daily walking range of 8-20 km, & climbed trees, went after small game, & carried kids and bags of tubers everywhere; then made tools, & danced 3-4 nights a week.
* The other big thing that has changed since the Stone Age environment for which we were designed is that our chronic stress levels are way higher. So anything (yoga, meditation, therapy, TRE, moving to the country) that reduces those will benefit. Psycho-neuro-immunology has demonstrated many pathways leading from a stressful environment to various disease states.
My philosophy was to throw everything at the kidney disease, so once the above is in place you could also:
* Take the Chinese herbs that work against kidney disease. The main one is astragalus. Google astragalus nephritis & you'll see some papers & case studies of people who were cured of glomerulonephritis by astragalus alone. This paper discusses several other Chinese herbs used against kidney disease. I bought most of them (at Botanica in Glenferrie Road, plus maybe one or two online) and made a pot of herbal tea from them, which I drank through each day. My list was Astragalus, Dong quai (angelica sinensis) (don't use if on blood-thinners as it is a blood-thinner), T Wilfordii, Rhubarb (da huang), and L Wallichii. And nettle.
* Make a daily vegetable juice. (Plenty of carrot & apple will make it drinkable.) That's how Dr Sandra Cabot's grandfather cured her grandmother of nephritis - & was part of my cure too. Put garlic & tumeric in the juice, as these knock off all viruses, bacteria & fungi, & have lots of antioxidants. Oxidative stress is involved in kidney disease, and the antioxidants in garlic & tumeric will counter that.
* Green tea. Green tea's chief curative element is its "EGCGs". According to the literature, these "favorably affect the development of immune-mediated glomerulonephritis"..."reduced proteinuria and serum creatinine, and marked improvement in renal histology".) As green tea is cheap, easy to make & not bad to drink, it's another no-brainer.
* I took a spectrum of vitamins & minerals, just to make sure those bases were covered. One important one is vitamin D, deficiency of which sometimes occurs with nephritis. iHerb in the US is an excellent source of cheap online vitamins. They're quick & the freight is cheap.
Beyond the above, there are many more options. But budgets, time & tolerance are all limited: doing everything is impossible, & trying to do everything is probably counterproductive: life just gets too narrow to be enjoyable. However if further experiments are desired at some stage:
* There is some evidence that stomach enzymes such as Serrapeptase control kidney disease.
* Allergy testing might identify unsuspected allergens that make the autoimmune response worse. For example many people with autoimmune react badly to the nightshade family. (They never bothered me, but ______ could be different.)
* Acupuncture seems to address many problems that Medicine can't.
* The list goes on: Removing amalgam fillings and/or chelating out mercury (there is evidence that mercury causes autoimmune disease, and also it is directly nephro-toxic); fixing her body's methylation (detox) system with methyl supplements; taking strong probiotics to heal the gut, & thus stop leaky gut - the process by which food proteins escape into the bloodstream & provoke the autoimmune response... etcetera.
John