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Neural therapy is unique in Western conventional medicine in its focus on regulatory mechanisms, specifically those involving the autonomic nervous system. For this reason it is sometimes called "Regulation therapy". Of course a healthy body regulates itself. Under normal circumstance, it should not need any external assistance. It is only when proper regulation is not occurring that problems arise; then the physician needs to seek out why. Systemic breakdowns of autonomic nervous system function do occur. These are rare, are often related to genetic disorders and are called by neurologists "dysautonomias". On the other hand, localized autonomic nervous system dysfunction is common. The cause is always an "interference field", and this is the goal of neural therapy: to search out and treat interference fields. If the overall health of the patient is otherwise good, treatment of the interference field will nearly always restore normal function. However not all regulation occurs at the level of the autonomic nervous system. The body has numerous regulatory systems, from the sub-cellular to the systemic. The purpose of regulation is always to provide homeostasis, i.e. a stable physical and chemical environment at whatever level the regulation is operating. If this regulation fails, (parameters deviating higher or lower than optimal), an "off-balance" (Revici's term) is said to have occurred. (A brief discussion of this concept can be found in my book http://www. neuraltherapybook. com on pages 27 & 28). The counter-intuitive part of this idea is that both a high or low deviation from the norm can mean the same thing. (And a deviation can "flip" from high to low, or vice-versa. )Both a high or low body temperature can mean that the body is fighting an infection. Dosch's textbook reports that interference fields can have either lower or higher electric potentials than that of the surrounding tissues. This principle holds true for certain blood parameters as well. Both low and high serum sodium concentrations can mean dehydration, (and salt deficiency). This may also be true of serum cholesterol levels. I want to present a case that demonstrates this. But before doing so, a few words about serum cholesterol (and serum triglycerides) and their relationships to gluten sensitivity:In a previous newsletter (Vol. 2 No. 9 September 2007), I explained how poor response to neural therapy can often be explained by exposure to gluten in a gluten-sensitive individual. Gluten sensitivity is common and manifests in many different ways, gastrointestinal distress being only one. Diagnosis is too big a subject to be discussed in detail here, but there are a couple of serum markers that I find useful as "red flags". One is a low serum triglyceride (<1. 25 or 50); the other is a low serum cholesterol (<4. 0 or 160) (and especially the LDL cholesterol (<2. 5 or 100)). An easy explanation for these low parameters is fat malabsorption in the small intestine. Malabsorption is a hall-mark of gluten sensitivity, although in most individuals it is mild. However there may be other mechanisms at work because in many gluten sensitive patients, their serum cholesterol levels are high. I take this as being a non-specific response to stress, as cholesterols levels can increase for many reasons. It is interesting that in mice experiments, salt restriction has been shown to elevate cholesterol levels. But back to my patient:This 60 year old female patient came to me for a second opinion about a high cholesterol level, for which her family physician was recommending cholesterol‐lowering drugs. The cholesterol level was only mildly elevated (6. 81 or 263), with an LDL of 4. 66 (or 172). There was little family history of coronary disease and almost no other risk factors. She did however complain of fatigue, headaches, fluid retention, gastro‐esophageal reflux and vaginal dryness. Her mother had died of pancreatic cancer. For these reasons I suspected underlying gluten sensitivity and had her do an enterolab test https://www. enterolab. com/Home. htm which was positive for antigliadin antibodies. Looking back on her blood chemistry from 13 years before, she had very low LDL cholesterol levels. Clearly she had been under gluten‐induced stress even then. A gluten‐free diet, some nutritional support, a little bio‐identical estrogen and DHEA and 6 months later her serum cholesterol dropped to 6. 16 (238), and LDL to 3. 99 (154). She was also feeling better in many respects. The lessons from this story? For good results in neural therapy, regulation is important at all levels. Gluten sensitivity needs to be identified and treated. Low cholesterol (and triglycerides) can mean gluten sensitivity, but so can a high cholesterol. And cholesterol values can "flip"! Sincerely, Robert F. Kidd, MD, CM |