Two new ways to prevent autoimmune diseases....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 10-20-2009

Yesterday, there were two related news articles that contained information on two separate ways to prevent autoimmune diseases. These two studies strongly suggest that you can go a long way towards preventing autoimmune diseases in two ways, one of which is a bit challenging for some people and one is quite easy for most people.

1. Here’s the one some people may find harder to use.

Yesterday, HealthDay News had this headline.:

Household Insecticides May Be Linked to Autoimmune Diseases

Research has found that women's exposure to household insecticides – including roach and mosquito killers – seemed to about double their risk of getting the autoimmune disorders rheumatoid arthritis & lupus.

The researcher Christine Parks, was careful to note that this finding does not prove the insecticides cause autoimmune disease since some 3rd factor might somehow cause both effects. But she also said, "It's hard to envision what other factors might explain this association."

In some multiunit apartments it can be hard to avoid using insecticide to kill off roaches and prevent them from over-running your unit.

But, if you live in such a place, you may be able to move to a duplex with neighbors who keep their place clean or to a more upscale building where people don’t do things like leave chicken bones in the hall.

And, if you live in a home, there are three ways to kill off roaches that don’t expose you continuously to insecticides.

You can be extremely careful to catch kill, and flush any roaches you inadvertently bring home on your clothes or in your groceries – and to be very careful to either not leave food crumbs around on counters or floors or clean them off often or both.

If you find they live in a certain place in the wall you can dump plentiful boric acid into the recess where they live and seal it up so they can’t get out before they eat some of the boric acid since it’s easier for them to get to.

And, if that fails, you can remove all people, pets, medicines, supplements, and food and have your house fumigated. That also kills ants, spiders and termites. It’s extremely dangerous while it’s being done. But after it’s done and your house is aired out, the poison is gone. It isn’t like often spraying a long-lasting pesticide that both you and the roaches are then exposed to over time.

For mosquitoes, you can make sure all doors and windows have screens that cover the window or door completely enough to keep mosquitoes from entering and to try to have the doors or screen doors always shut unless someone is going through them. If you have to, you can get a mosquito netting for your bed like they do in the tropics. And you can wear more clothes including hooded sweat shirts if necessary.

And, of even more importance you can do what you can to make sure that on your property or on or near your rental there are no sources of standing, stagnant water to breed mosquitoes. (You can also put mosquito eating fish in some such sources of standing, stagnant water.)

What this research suggests is that you use methods like these and only very rarely and with great reluctance use any insecticide that you have to spray personally or inside or very near where you live.

Some people simply use the stuff like water or spray starch & act is if it is totally safe to use insecticides often inside where they live.

That may well cause some cancers over time. Now it looks like this kind of careless overuse may contribute in some way to causing autoimmune diseases as well.

2. The second story has even more exciting implications and is far easier to use.

Yesterday, HealthDay News also had this headline.:

Scientists Find New Key to Lupus

Researchers say they now have new and more complete understanding of how lupus develops in mice.

Here’s the two key quotes by the researcher, Lata Mukundan, a Stanford University School of Medicine researcher & co-author of the study published online Oct. 18 in the journal Nature Medicine.

“At issue is the immune system's ability to take out the trash -- to get rid of cells that don't have long to live. Just like in mice, in humans, if you don't clear the dying cells, then that predisposes you to lupus," and "If you look at patients with lupus, they have an inability to clear those dead cells,"

Their study looked at how immune-system cells detect which other cells are dying in order to dispose of them. The process & protein they discovered that did this in mice they may be able to boost in a way to improve this process with drugs that apparently are already known as having that effect.

But to me, the two quotes are far more important. Macrophages are the component of your immune system that does this job. If they are healthy, there are enough of them, and they are effective, they remove enough of these dead or dying cells and other cellular debris to keep you healthy.

And, here’s the exciting news. We already know two cheaper and safer ways than drugs yet to be approved for us to help ensure macrophages do a good job & protect our health.

We know this because the same issue comes up with cleaning out and preventing the build up of beta amyloid in the brain causing Alzheimer’s disease.

It turns out if you get enough vitamin D3 and/or take turmeric or its active ingredient curcumin or often eat curried foods containing turmeric, your macrophages will be much more effective and your chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease and possibly recovering from a very early case of it are dramatically better. (It now looks as if the true minimum daily requirement for vitamin D3 in people who aren’t outside all day in sunny climates is between 1,000 & 3,000 iu a day. And you can get turmeric or curcumin supplements of 500 to 600 mg a capsule and take one a day.)

We already knew that people in very sunny places get far less multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease, than people in cloudy, darker, less sunny places.

Now we may know why.

The really neat thing to me is that taking these two supplements looks likely to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and virtually all kinds of cancers.

This researcher’s comments suggest if you take them, you get autoimmune disease protection too!