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Dr. Mazlen
We have a one hour show today. We'll be here with live guests. We have
authors here today discussing a new book called "Breakthrough in Cell
Defense" and the authors are Dr. Allen C. Somersall and Dr. Gustavo
Bounous. As well, we have John Molson, a Vice President of Immunotec
Research. We're going to have a great show. We're going to start off by
introducing the authors of this new book, this exciting book which deals with
the glutathione revolution. So let's start off first with Dr. Gustavo Bounous
who actually is the person who discovered the clinical applications of the
glutathione type of modulator which is called Immunocal. Dr. Bounous, welcome
to our show.
Dr. Bounous
Thank you.
Dr. Mazlen
Tell us a little bit about how this happened.
Dr. Bounous
Well, it happened a long time ago, close to 20 years ago as most of this thing
happened by pure serendipity or I would say by accident. I was then working
at McGill University on the effect of nutrition on the immune system and when
you work on that particular aspect, you use mice as an animal of preference.
And I was observing certain interesting findings until I received a package
from Europe, namely from Switzerland. At the time as you probably know the
cheese was manufactured and the whey, which is the resulting supernatant of
cheese production was thrown away. It was a waste product which caused a
great pollution for the river and a tremendous fee for the cheese industry.
So they decided to concentrate and remove the water by ultra filtration and
they were now having this powder which was very rich in nitrogen and protein.
They didn't know what to do with it and they sent to me. So I fed my mice
this powder in a 20% formula diet and I noticed that it was nutritionally
very adequate, actually very good, but the mice were growing at the same rate
as their normal counterparts, but if they were challenged with antigens or
bacteria, they were responding more vigorously, and we're talking about a 5
load difference in antibody production. That sounded interesting and I
compared this which was actually a protein mixture which was called whey
protein concentrate with several other purified proteins and it was indeed
this one that was the best in terms of enhancing the immune response.
Now, the answer of the mechanism, why this happened, came when this
product stopped working, which, unfortunately, for me happened in 1988.
Nutritionally, this product was still good, but when I was challenging my
mice, they were responding just like normal controls. And you can imagine my
state of mind. I couldn't throw away 8 years of research. Something had to be
done so I had to become smart and see what this mixture was made of and if I
tell you how the real story happened, to be honest with you, I was watching a
television program from Switzerland in which two chefs were complaining about
the changing texture of the cheese, and were ascribing that to the fact that
the pasteurization temperature of milk was raised from say 73 to 78
centigrade to make sure that all the salmonella were killed. That was in
response to an epidemic of salmonella in France. And that happened worldwide
and this is why all the whey protein concentrates we were trying analyze from
where ever they were produced, whether Australia, Denmark or the United
States was ineffective in this particular property. So, then I consulted with
a protein milk chemist and I found that in that range of temperature in the
liquid phase, not in the dried phase, this protein can be unfolded, partially
or totally and this thing that happened, where you unfold this type of
protein, you split the disulfate bond. Now I have to open a little scientific
parentheses if I may. The two molecules which are essential for the
formation of glutathione are cystine and glutamic acid. Now, cystine is found
in the whey protein. It's found particularly in the human milk, in the egg
white and more effectively can be concentrated. But you have to be careful
not to heat it because otherwise you split that bond. If you do split that
bond, the cystine becomes 2 cysteine which is very good, which is
actually what the cells need to fabricate it's own glutathione, but it
doesn't travel in the blood. It is destroyed because paradoxically, it is
toxic. So you have to have to have this thing in what is called the
"undenatured" form, in other words to preserve the two molecules
linked together. Fortunately, for us this bond is not split by tripsin during
digestion, so what happens is, it goes through the stomach, through the
intestine and is absorbed moistly in the form of cystine, that's two
molecules linked together. Dr. Droge has done extensive work on this. Now
when they reach the target cell they are split into the 2 cysteine and then
they can go ahead and make glutathione. So, I had to backtrack what had
happened and make my own cheese in a university laboratory in Canada and with
low temperatures, 73 centigrade and then use a micro filtration, I was able
to resume to find this property again. Now, glutathione you probably heard
about but it's something certainly we'll hear a lot about certainly in the
future.
Dr. Mazlen
You're going to hear a lot even on this program very shortly. Let me just go
over to Dr. Somersall for a minute. How did you get involved with this
amazing discovery?
Dr. Somersall
Well, thanks for having us on the show, Dr. Mazlen. My interest goes back,
obviously, to my training in chemistry. I actually have a doctorate degree in
chemistry from the University of Toronto and as a result of that got
introduced to the whole area of vitamins and food supplements and for 20
years I had been a strong advocate of supplementation and of
self-responsibility as being one of the bottlenecks to improving the health
of industrialized societies. And really, when I met Dr. Bounous about a year
and a half ago I was literally overwhelmed by what he had discovered. First,
I was overwhelmed because I had been exposed to this whole field in a sense,
to people who had come into it, through the back door if you like. When I met
Dr. Bounous, I realized here was an avante garde mainstream scientist who had
come right into this field and into the industry right through the front
door. In fact, he had pushed the front door down. Here was a physician
trained, specialized in a research laboratory, in a university setting in a
hospital doing classic research and just by coincidence stumbles upon what
seems to be a most important secret of nature and I understood immediately
the implications, because having studied medicine and practicing medicine I
long thought that if we could only find some way to impact the human cell so
as to empower it, that is the cell, to do what it does best, not so much what
we as doctors do, but as what the human cell does, because I've always felt
that the mystery of life is within the cell itself and not in our human hands
or our human minds and what Dr. Bounous had done, as I understood it at the
time, was to essentially find a way to encourage the cell to do more of what
it wanted to do in its own defense. And that's really where glutathione comes
in.
Dr. Mazlen
We're talking about a new book entitled "Breakthrough in Cell
Defense". This book is recently published. It will be available in the
major book stores by mid April. It's also available right now on Amazon.com.
It's published by Golden Eight Communications which is located in Toronto,
Canada and Atlanta, Georgia. For information on the book later on, if you
want to know about ordering it, you can dial 1-800-501-8516. We have a
question right now from Florence in Queens. Florence welcome to our show.
Florence
I'm reading all about it and I'd like to know if it can be, I'm sure it won't
hurt someone suffering with lung cancer, but is there any evidence that it
can help.
Dr. Mazlen
Dr. Bounous is going to answer your question.
Dr. Bounous
I don't know if the law will allow me to say. I have anecdotal evidence of
three cases of lung cancer which are personal friends of mine and these are
non-small cell carcinoma of the lung which had really showed substantial
benefit. I'm talking about only 4 or 5 months ago, so I don't know what the
long term is, to the point that I'm hoping to have a clinical trial of lung
cancer with this product. If you ask me the mechanism, it is completely
hypothetical at this stage. I would suggest if I may have a half a minute,
that as I mentioned the roll of glutathione in the lymphocyte, it is a
crucial antioxidant that allows the immune cell to perform without being
hampered by the development of oxygen free radicals. There arrives a time on
the long term after several years, that some of these cells are running out
of glutathione. They get depleted. So, I think, in my humble opinion, that
natural killer cells, the NK cells, are the most potent anticancer cell
because they do not require sophisticated mechanisms of interaction and they
are known to become depleted of glutathione on the long run, so it's nice if
you can provide them the precursor so they can reconstitute their own
antioxidant and now perform effectively to attack the cancer cell. This is
just an hypothesis.
Dr. Mazlen
We're going to be talking some more about the work with Immunocal and its
work in clinical applications. One of the first studies, as I understand
according to your book, was done on children with AIDS in Montreal. I would
like to hear something about that work.
Dr. Bounous.
We were impressed by the fact, in going back to mice, that the mice which
fully responded to the challenge of bacteria with increased production of
antibodies, they were also capable of replenishing that glutathione very
rapidly. In fact, unlike the control mice, in which we saw depletion of
glutathione after 3 or 4 days, these mice were actually having more
glutathione then before. So, at first we looked at Dr Baruchel who is a
pediatrician expert, he worked with Dr. Montagne at the Pasteur Institute, so
he was predictably interested in anything that could help the children with
AIDS, and as you know, AIDS is characterized very early by a substantial drop
in glutathione in the T-cell lymphocytes, so anything that could help
replenish the glutathione which has, incidentally, an antiviral effect, could
be helpful. So we started with a small 11 cases studied, so unfortunately, it
was not a wide study but it was sufficient to show that in each child in
which the glutathione level in the lymphocyte were lower at the onset it was
reestablished again but never above the normal value. And that was
accompanied by the improved clinical situation, weight gain and so on.
Unfortunately, he left Montreal, he's now in Toronto, so, but we are
actively, especially with the help of Dr. Mazlen pursuing the goal to
expanding the study to adults. We have a study on adults going on in Canada
now with AIDS with Immunocal in association with drug therapy. What we are
aiming to have is to see what it could do as complimentary. One of the side
effects of the drug, unfortunately is that they deplete the glutathione,
especially the reduced glutathione which is the important part of
glutathione, especially in the mitochondria, so you can see at one time they
killed the virus and at the same time they killed the element that's supposed
to help the immune system to combat the virus. So, if we can combine these
two treatments we hope to have some interesting data.
Dr. Mazlen
Does that answer your question in terms of research or would you like to add
something to that Allen, in terms of expanding on it?
Dr. Allen
I just wanted to comment that not only have we looked at clinicals in
children, but we've also done some case studies in adults in one particular
family I speak about in the book where we actually give some of the detailed
clinical information about this particular family and with their permission,
this particular family actually had AIDS introduced into the family and both
mother and father and then a small child at the age of 2 have all been
diagnosed clinically with AIDS and were treated with Immunocal and they all
showed the same sort of clinical response that was seen as we saw in the case
of the children at the Children's Hospital. The important thing about this
was, here were adults who found taking the standard anti-retroviral therapy,
the AIDS cocktail so unbearable, they found in using Immunocal they had no
such side effects and in addition to that, after they had been taking the
Immunocal for some time we were then able to re-introduce the AIDS cocktail
and now we were able to demonstrate some tolerance to the drugs which does
imply that there's some adjuvant value, in other words, for patients with
AIDS take the standard drug cocktail if they use Immunocal to maintain their
glutathione levels, they seemed to have a much better tolerance for those
drugs and some further clinical work is now in process to try to elucidate
exactly why that happens.
Dr. Mazlen
Well, that's extremely exciting information for those who are listening in
the audience who have AIDS or know somebody who has AIDS. There's going to be
a lot more coming in the way of research in this area from the Immunotec
Research, LTD in Canada and investigators who will be cooperating with them.
So we'll having more of that in the future on other shows possibly to deal
with that.
I'm going to take Marie in the Bronx, what is your question, Marie?
Marie
Hi, I've been taking Immunocal for about 8 months. I've been able to
get it through Medicaid and I take a lot other vitamins and supplements. My
question is, is it safe, are there any interaction. I'm taking other
antioxidants and CoQ10 and do I need to take all this other stuff?
Dr. Somersall
Hi, Marie, you've asked two different questions, so let me deal with them in turn.
The first one has to do with safety. One of the most amazing things that I
found when we pursued this was that Dr. Bounous had actually not made an
invention at all. What he had really done was to make a discovery because the
identical proteins found in Immunocal are the same proteins found in mother's
breast milk. See, nature was so wise in defending the newborn, the fragile
infant, that nature provided these very proteins with the very form of
cysteine that the baby needs to feed the cells, the precursors to make
glutathione. Of course, when we developed cheese we could no longer get
mother's breast milk, so we have to rely on other sources of it. And what Dr.
Bounous was able to do by discovering this was to make available to the
entire population a safe, effective and convenient way of getting adequate
supplies of this important precursor for the cells to make glutathione. So
the question of safety is really is that it's as safe as mother's breast
milk.
On the second point, and by the way, I should also add that the cells have
a limit in how they actually use this by what we call feedback inhibition, so
there's never any question of overdosing or toxicity in that sense. So it has
a very wide therapeutic index. The second issue has to do with any interactions
that it may have with other things you take. Again, going back again to the
question of mother's breast milk. It is nature's food at it's best and
there's absolutely no evidence that we found anywhere of any interaction with
any drug or food supplement that gives us any concern whatsoever. It's an
isolated protein concentrate from a natural source containing proteins
identical to proteins in mother's breast milk in a concentrated form. You
should have no anxieties at all about anything else you take. As to whether
you need to take all the other things you take, that's a question you have to
answer. But I'll tell you this, if I had one dollar to spend on something to
improve my immune system, something to defend my body, defend my cells I have
no doubt that I would spend that dollar on the very source of the essential
building blocks that the cells need to make it's most important protective
molecule, that's glutathione. In other words, I would spend my one dollar on
Immunocal. If you had a $1.50 and you want to spend the 50 cents on something
else that's totally your choice.
Dr. Mazlen
We're going to take one more question before another break and that one is
from Frank in Long Island and he is asking whether or not the product is
approved my Medicaid and we're going to have John Molsen answer that one for
you.
John Molson
Yes, the product is approved by Medicaid and as you understand once you get
federal approval then you have to go to the states individually and that
process is ongoing currently. I believe we have approval from 18 states
individually. If you want to call the office on Monday, which is at
450-424-9992 and ask for me John Molsen, extension 234, I can get you the
states that are in abeyance currently.
Frank
Is that Medicare too?
John Molsen
That's correct. Also for Medicare*
(*Note: Medicare pays for tube feeding)
Dr. Mazlen
Now, we're going to be talking about something very important Additional
clinical research which has been done recently, some of which was done by Dr.
Paul Cheney, an eminent scientist who's well known and highly regarded in the
field of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and we're going to go back to Dr. Bounous
who's going to tell us a little bit about what Dr. Cheney found in treating
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients with Immunocal.
Dr. Bounous
Well, Dr. Cheney was on this program recently and we were extremely
privileged and lucky to have one of our distributors to provide Dr. Cheney
with a sample of Immunocal at the beginning of last year and Dr. Cheney was
impressed by the fact that it helped one of his patients. So, being
open-minded and inquisitive-minded he wanted to know more about it and he
started a protocol and he studied in depth 8 number of cases at different
stages of the syndrome. This is an extremely complex syndrome which goes
through different stages and I believe Dr. Cheney, with Dr. Peterson is
accredited with having first identified this syndrome. About the same time
that AIDS, in the same location that AIDS was seen. And he explained to me
when he was attending the International Conference at Harvard last October
the complexity of this syndrome and the result he was beginning to have, at
that time he had not completed his study, which he has now completed and he
was very impressed by several things. For one thing, lipid peroxidation which
is the sign of the presence of free radicals and the low activity of
glutathione was reduced to within normal ranges in these patients, so their
clinical symptoms had improved. In addition, the lymphocytes obtained from
this patients which were non-responsive as a antimicrobial were now extremely
effective against a host of microbia, or microbes, including chlamydia and
others which are involved in other diseases. So, he had this thing analyzed
in different laboratories at Harvard and elsewhere. So you can imagine his
interest to have a natural non-toxic product producing these effects. He had
originally experimented with NSC which is a drug which delivers cystine to
the cell but like most drugs has substantial side effects including cerebral
symptoms and nausea and vomiting at the clinical dose levels. So he was very
happy to move to Immunocal and he's now treating his patients with this
product.
Dr. Mazlen
Well, that's an exciting piece of information for those in our audience and
there are many who have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. We have a question about
that from Donna in New Jersey about Immunocal and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Donna, what is your question in this regard.
Donna,
I've been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and I'd like to know if
Immunocal is contraindicated for people with celiac disease? I'm not supposed
to ingest anything with wheat or gluten in it.
Dr. Bounous
I can answer you. There's no gluten and there is no wheat in Immunocal. It's
milk derived. In fact primarily it's made up of lactalbumin and serum albumin
and lactoferon. So there's no case seen actually. I don't think I would worry
at all unless you have a specific milk protein allergy which is a very rare
situation, we see no contraindication.
Dr. Mazlen
We're going to talk more about this work with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and
viruses. Dr. Somersall there was a mention that Immunocal may have some
effect on mycoplasma and chlamydia. You want to talk about that also?
Dr. Somersall
Yes, it's rather interesting. In fact, I will broaden the question somewhat
if I may because, you know when you think of any form of therapy medically,
we tend to think of specific application of therapy for a specific diagnosis
or a specific pinnacle symptom. So, you take this for that. When you think in
terms of health, the body doesn't really function in that mode at all. That
is really an artifact that we impose with our model and cells, essentially,
require common defense mechanisms against a wide range of challenges and
toxins and so when you think of bacteria and microorganisms generally, or we
think of viruses we classify the viruses by different characteristics and we
take specific measures as physicians to try to combat the different viruses.
The cell doesn't do that. The cell has this broad based, generalized approach
whereby its own defense it mounts specific responses which seem to have this
widespread capability and one of the good things of being able to stimulate
glutathione is you really empower the cells to make them super cells and they
have this wide spread defensive capability against a wide range of viruses,
against wide different types of bacteria. Against mycoplasma, against
chlamydia, and its really common mechanism is because these various
challenges and organisms are mediated through common pathways and the cells
are concerned about those common pathways and the most common defense at the
common pathway as it were is glutathione.
Dr. Mazlen
Okay, in that regard we have a question from Jim, who's upstate in Monroe,
New York about macular degeneration.
Jim
My son-in-law is a surgeon in Italy and he tells me that Italy is more
advanced in implantation of minuscule cells that feed the blood into the
retina. Can you tell me if there are any advances that you know of?
Dr. Bounous
That's a very interesting question because I practiced surgery in Italy
myself, in fact I trained there. I venture to ask you whether this is in the
town of Rome or Pisa?
Jim
Rome and Sicily.
Dr. Bounous
Because there is a very good surgeon-opthamologist down there so...
Unfortunately, I cannot answer your question because I have been away 30
years from it and don't know how it has evolved, but I hope that she gets
benefit from this procedure. I'm not familiar with that procedure.
Dr. Mazlen
What about the effect of the raising of glutathione in macular degeneration?
Dr. Bounous
This is the question I'm often asked from people in Canada who have macular
degeneration and although we have no specific study my general answer to this
is that to the extent that free radicals or oxygen derived radicals are
involved in the initiation or development of disease, to boost the level of
glutathione in the area involved could only help. And this is where I stand
at this moment. It could be beneficial although I have no proof except a
couple of anecdotes that seems to be favorable.
Dr. Mazlen
So you're saying that just protecting against free radical production in the
area of the macular may be of benefit in patients and in that sense would
Immunocal be used in these patients, obviously it wouldn't be a short term
thing...
Dr. Bounous
No, a long term thing.
Dr. Mazlen
You have to use it for a while.
Dr. Allen
If I may add Dr. Mazlen, that's generally true of such a wide variety of
diseases. I mean, if you think of things like the formation of cataracts in
the eye, or if you into the central nervous system and think of something
like Alzheimer's and perhaps the roll of metals or free radicals in general,
you may go into the gut and think of the pathogenesis of things like Crohn's
Disease and so on, or you may go into the skeletal muscles and heart. It
doesn't really matter because as far as the cells are concerned, they are
just seeing these common threats, and when the cell is empowered to answer
the treat of oxidation or the treat of free radical damage or the threat of
xenobiotics, the cell mounts one common response and all we're able to now is
to empower the cells to do that and make them super cells.
Dr. Mazlen
We have a question from Barbara in Brooklyn who's taking ATP right now,
Barbara,
Hi, Dr. Mazlen. I'm taking ATP and glutathione injections. What would be the
better thing to take, Immunocal or these injections twice weekly?
Dr. Somersall
Obviously, I'm not going to be your physician at a distance, or even out of
state, so I really don't know what your condition is.
Barbara
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Dr. Somersall
Let me just tell you. We just heard about that. Dr. Paul Cheney's work on
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What we do know is that glutathione is unstable in
the blood stream which means that by the time it gets to the cell a lot of it
gets degraded. And then we also learned that glutathione does not effectively
cross the cell membrane which means if we inject it into the circulation it
does not actually enter into the cell where it needs to do it's job and until
this breakthrough by Dr. Bounous where we're able to provide the precursor
that effectively goes into the cell to produce the glutathione we did the
best we could. So we took the glutathione by mouth and sometimes it was
injected. Now, we have a method that is safe, effective, and convenient. It's
safe, unlike injected glutathione and certainly NAC taken in large quantities
and so on. It is effective because it is stable to digestion, stable in the
blood stream and effective in crossing cell membrane which brings me to
effective. When your doing all that when you take Immunocal, your
intracellular glutathione levels rise and when those levels rise you see all
beneficial effects and as Dr. Paul Cheney has shown recently in Chronic
Fatigue we can definitely get the benefits by using Immunocal.
Dr. Mazlen
All right, we're going to talk a little bit now about some important research
being done by Dr. Lands. Dr. Bounous tell us about that.
Dr. Bounous
This is a very interesting study. Dr. Larry Lands is the chief of the Cystic
Fibrosis Clinic of Pediatric Hospital of McGill University. He has started a
study on cystic fibrosis but initially he wanted to see what the Immunocal
does in healthy humans and to his great pleasure he found in a double blind
study, in other words, in a scientific method with placebo, that he had two
groups of healthy young men and women between 20 and 23, that they took the
powder not knowing what they were taking, the placebo had the same appearance
as Immunocal, but at the end of 10 months he found that the group who had
taken Immunocal were now able to perform increased volition on muscle
activity to the tune of 13% increment. That, you know, could make the
difference between a gold medal and arriving last in an Olympic game. It also
showed that there is an increasing glutathione in the lymphocyte which is
surprising in a way because it was almost a dogma to say in health people
glutathione is at optimum level in the blood cells, but these were city
dwellers so may have indicated since the second major function of glutathione
is to detoxify all those terrible pollutants we are facing everyday where we
are breathing and where we are eating, it is used up, because when it does
that function it links with the carcinogenic, whatever the pollutant is and
it leaves the body with it and so it has to be resynthetized. Anyway, he
found the study and the study was acclaimed by the American Thoracic
Physiology Association and one other as the best study to be presented
out of 5,000 to be presented to the media because it had never been found that
an antioxidant can increase the strength of the muscle, the volition of the
muscle. It was found that an antioxidant can increase the muscular response
to electrical stimuli, but never to the volitional muscle. That is, of
course, the background of clinical studies. We now know why patients, for
example, with advanced cancer, when they take this protocol, all of a sudden
they feel stronger, they increase their energy level and that is documented
in healthy volunteers. And Dr. Lands is now undertaking the second phase
which is cystic fibrosis because the muscle of the thoracic respiratory
muscles are weakened in cystic fibrosis, and he thinks that plays a role and
also oxidative stress is very crucial to the development of bronchial mucosa
changes. We have a study in Brazil, but not on this subject, it's done on the
effect of this product on wasting in cancer patients,
Dr. Mazlen
Cachexia in cancer patients. We're going to be talking some more about the
interesting research that's being done but I first wanted to ask Dr. Bounous
a comment on about whether all whey proteins are equivalent.
Dr. Bounous
That's an interesting question. I happen to be an expert in failure because,
as I mentioned earlier in the introduction, in 1988 this product in which I
had found the property had stopped working. And I spent 3-4 agonizing years
trying to find out why and there is nothing worse for a scientist to having
12 years of work being destroyed by oneself. I couldn't rest until I found
the reason so I checked every product available from New Zealand, Australia,
United States and Europe and they were all ineffective. Nutritionally they
were all good. So we had to reconstitute what was necessary. It's not an
esoteric, extraordinary exploit. What you have to do, you have to use a
special ultra filtration system which is so clean that it does not require a
second pasteurization because it's a balancing act between the bioactivity of
this protein which required it to be native in the form-- confirmation--and
the bacteria, of course, you want to kill as many bacteria, especially the
pathogens, so you have to heat it. So you have to use microfiltration. You
have to use low level pasteurization, but more importantly you have to have
in house microbiologists to check every step of the way that you are doing
the right thing. So, I'm not prepared to say that all whey protein which may
be cheaper on the market because industry doesn't care about the bioactivity,
they only care about the nutritional aspect and the low bacterial content, so
I'm not prepared to say that all these products are good but I'm not also
prepared to say that they're necessarily bad. I think the most the right
answer was given by Dr. Cheney who was asked a similar question. His answer
was "I don't know." And this is what a scientist should say. He has
not tried the other. I don't think he's going to spend another two
years of work to see if the others are equally effective.
Dr. Mazlen
We have Marla in New Jersey. Her son has hepatitis C. She has a question about
the Immunocal for that and Dr. Bounous is going to answer you.
Marla
I would like to know if glutathione would be helpful or would it affect his
liver negatively?
Dr. Bounous
OK, I can give you an answer of a study being terminated in Japan by Dr.Watanabe
(sp?) at Gilter University. He used Immunocal in patients with hepatitis B
which is almost epidemic in the Orient and also in hepatitis C. What he found
in hepatitis B is that the virus of hepatitis, like the virus of AIDS, is
very sensitive to glutathione and this patient's liver had low glutathione
levels. They have done few biopsies but glutathione is indicated by the
lymphocytes which is a good indicator of what the liver has. He was able to
raise glutathione but the raise improved the clinical situation and he has
two laboratory data which I found interesting. A substantial, a 4-fold
increase in natural killer cell activity, not only in the number but in their
activity. And natural killer cells have, of course, a powerful....as I
mentioned earlier the first line of defense against infected cells or cancer
cells. There is a rationale for that and the low glutathione in the liver,
which is one of the mechanisms that predisposes them to eventually cirrhosis
later on has been substantially improved. Now, the hepatitis C was effective
but, unfortunately, the number was not sufficient so what Dr. Watanabe is
doing is a study of hepatitis C in a larger group, but indications are that
the virus of hepatitis C will be equally affected by raising glutathione
levels through Immunocal which I found, apart from the benefit that I hope
your relative will have, but what I found fascinating from a purely
scientific point of view is that non-specificity of glutathione against
several types of viruses and this is probably why the virus effect doesn't
bother to mutate in front of glutathione because he knows he's going to get
it whichever form he is in and this is what I think, I hope, to have the
results soon.
Dr. Mazlen
We have David in New Jersey whose wife has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. David,
what is your question.
David
The question is I would like to know if Immunocal requires a doctor's
prescription and if so, would it be covered by drug prescription plans? How
much does it cost?
Dr. Mazlen
OK, if it's going to be given for Medicare or Medicaid benefits, it should be
on a doctor's prescription.
David
What if it isn't?
Dr. Somersall
However it doesn't require a doctor's prescription. It's an over-the-counter
product and, obviously, with no side effects and no medical consequences, it
really does not require that but because of it's clinical benefits, doctors
are now electing to use it as part of their treatment regime in a number of
specific conditions, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome being one of them.
Dr. Mazlen
Dr. Adante Accosta, you have a question on Multiple Sclerosis, Dr. Adante.
Dr. Accosta
I'm sorry my question was directed more toward the viral load. Dr. Bounous, I
was wondering if by raising T-cell count would the Immunocal as a result of
lowering oxidative stress, would that in turn lower viral load?
Dr. Mazlen
In what condition?
Dr. Accosta
Well, for MS, hepatitis.
Dr. Bounous
I would think so. The stimulus or replication of the virus is strictly
related to the production of free radicals, mostly oxygen derived free
radicals in the cell and cytoplasma and it is known as long as glutathione is
there to quench these free radicals, the virus doesn't replicate very well.
It is when the level of glutathione goes down below 50%, say, the virus
begins to be very happy and starts to multiply. And it seems that everything
the cells don't like the virus loves. So, I would suggest that if one can
raise the glutathione levels especially in the area of the mitochondria and
in the vicinity that will slow down viral replication, any type of virus.
[The opinions expressed during the interviews on the radio show represent
the opinions of the individuals and not that of Immunotec Research LTD.]
Transcribed by
Carolyn Viviani
carolynv@inx.net
Permission is given to repost, copy
and distribute this transcript as long as my name is not removed from
it.
©
1999 Roger G. Mazlen, M.D.
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