Type 1 Diabetes; Pancreatic inflammation and Fibrosis
Way back in 2004 I started hearing from Type 1 diabetics who had started using systemic enzymes. The cases were eye-opening. They were telling me that after 1 to 3 months on the enzymes their A1C readings were dropping, not only where they dropping some had dropped so low as to be below the level considered diabetic! Some patients had dropped their insulin need and some whose A1C was in the 5’s had no call for insulin at all! At the time I speculated that there was some long-term low to mid- level chronic inflammation happening at the pancreas and that that chronic inflammation was doing what such inflammation ALWASY does, create fibrosis / scar tissue. Further, I speculated that if that inflammation could be lowered and the scar tissue / fibrosis done away with the diabetes would be either lessened or gone.
In 2004, I added these findings and my theories to my general systemic enzymes lecture. While giving a series of 8 lectures in India to physicians of various specialities at the behest of a med school pharmacology dept. and an enzymes raw material maker there, I included the new ideas, only to be taken severely to task by diabeticians who questioned there being long-term inflammation in the pancreas and also given what they “knew for sure” happened in diabetes, they highly doubted that any form of fibrosis was growing in the pancreases of their diabetic patients!
My vindication didn’t take long in coming:
On the Inflammation:
- Shoelson, S. E., Lee, J. & Goldfine, A. B. Inflammation and insulin resistance. J. Clin. Invest. 116, 1793–1801 (2006).
- Donath, M. Y., Boni-Schnetzler, M., Ellingsgaard, H. & Ehses, J. A. Islet inflammation impairs the pancreatic β-cell in type 2 diabetes. Physiology 24, 325–331 (2009).
On the Fibrosis:
- Hull, R. L., Westermark, G. T., Westermark, P. & Kahn, S. E. Islet amyloid: a critical entity in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes. J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 89, 3629–3643 (2004).
- Physiol Rev. 2011 Jul;91(3):795-826. doi: 10.1152/physrev.00042.2009.
- Islet amyloid polypeptide, islet amyloid, and diabetes mellitus.
- Westermark P1, Andersson A, Westermark GT.
- Korean J Radiol. 2012 Jan-Feb; 13(1): 94–97.
- Published online 2011 Dec 23. doi: 10.3348/kjr.2012.13.1.94
- PMCID: PMC3253409
- PMID: 22247642
- Pancreatic Islet Cell Amyloidosis Manifesting as a Large Pancreas Mehmet Ruhi Onur, MD, 1 Mehmet Yalnız, MD,2 Ahmet Kursad Poyraz, MD,1 Ibrahim Hanifi Özercan, MD,3 and Yusuf Ozkan, MD4
I could list more references here, but you get the idea. So, what could be done for the inflammation? Well allopathic medicine thought to use their usual tools against inflammation NSAID meds, (i.e. aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen etc. both the Cox 1 and Cox 2 inhibitors). Problem was long term constant use of those meds creates: liver damage and liver failure and death, kidney damage and kidney failure and death, hemorrhaging intestines which could be fatal. (remember that in the US alone according to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Report, 18 to 22,000 people die each year from the use, not abuse, of the NSAID medications)! The Cox 2 drugs taken long term have a funny side effect for a drug that was at first promised to be side effect free! They cause heart inflammation and kill people! Celebrex killed 35,000 patients before but was temporarily taken off the market! So, the docs thought to use the corticosteroid drugs such as hydrocortisone, prednisone, etc… But the side effects of long term use of those drugs are horrific as well: Skull bones changing shape, super thin skin that easily tears, severe black and blues under the skin , water weight build up from the face down, plus a ton of other major side effects that you can read about here. So those meds were out as well.
Also, allopathic medicine was at a loss as to how to lyse, (eat) away, or reduce the fibrosis (amyloidosis) that blocks the channels the beta cells use to get insulin to the blood stream. Aside from heparin, the blood thinning drug, there isn’t much in the allopathic armamentarium that can lyse scar tissue / fibrosis / amyloid deposits.
But we already knew the answer: We knew that the only safe thing to fight inflammation with was a proteolytic enzyme. 50 years of German allopathic medical experience in using systemic enzymes to eat pro inflammatory circulating immune complexes (pro inflammatory cytokines). The cytokines that cause inflammation are protein tagged by the body as being exogenous, that means not belonging to the body, and that what the orally administered proteolytic enzymes eat!
That 50 years of clinical experience by German, Central and Eastern European allopathic medicine as well as Japanese allopathic medicine showed that all manner of scar tissue / fibrosis could be eaten away by orally administered proteolytic enzymes working systemically (i.e. body wide), from post op abdominal scar tissue, to breast cysts, to glomerulosclerosis (fibrosis of the kidneys) and they documented it all in nearly 200 peer reviewed, journal published studies! (www.enzymescience.com).
What the clinical experience has been since ‘2004: We’ve learned that the enzymes are not a “cure” for type 1 diabetes. Even when patients have months and months of well under 6 A1C readings while on the enzymes, if their use is dropped because the patient thinks he’s had a miraculous healing, in a few months the A1C will start crawling up again as pancreatic inflammation returns and that rebuilds scar tissue. The physiologic rule with fibrosis / scar tissue is that it will want to regrow where ever it has already been. So while we thought for a spell that we might have a cure, the long term clinical experience with both patients and docs communicating with us has been that the enzymes are a great help in most but not all type 1 diabetic patients but even if the A1C consistently for months is below 6 while on the enzymes, the enzymes are not a cure.
Secondly, while the majority of Type 1 patients benefited from getting lower A1C readings and having a lower insulin need, the enzymes did not change the A1C’s of type 2 patients at all. We’ve yet to figure out a reason why.
We also figured out one other thing: all diabetic patients are very zinc deficient! According to Hams Histology zinc is not only the main mineral building block of all epithelial tissue, (i.e. skin, muscle, internal organs and eyes), they along with magnesium are essential co-factors, (i.e. essential mineral building blocks) without which insulin cannot be made by the body! So, we added zinc citrate to the enzymes when dealing with Type 1 patients. The RDA for zinc is figured out by starving a lab mouse of zinc until it gets a macro deficiency disease then they go to the dose before the macro disease state hit, the egg heads add 5 units of measure and bingo there you have it the US RDA!!! How many more POUNDS of skin, muscle, internal organs and eyes do you have over a 1 ounce lab mouse? The RDA is designed to keep folks dependent on the medical industry by keeping folks in a constant state of nutritional deficiency! Period! Medicine is a business and like all businesses it depends on repeat customers! Cures makes you not dependent on the medical industry losing them money. Also, on the subject of minerals you need to hear why your mineral supplements are lying bold fact to you about what they make you think you’re getting from them Learn about that here.
So now down to brass tacks: what do I suggest Type 1 diabetic patients do to possibly lower their A1C?
- Zymessence: 1 or 2 capsules taken 3x daily.
- Zinc Citrate: 1 capsule of ours for 100 mg of elemental zinc daily.
- Magscorbate: 1 capsule 2 x daily for 1010,g of elemental magnesium.