Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Another Part of the Plan of Attack

I've mentioned the creatine supplementing that began Friday night, 2/5/10.  Some other things that I had started doing perhaps two weeks ago is supplementing Evan with vitamins. I am giving him children's chewable multivitamin as well a high dose Vitamin D to help with inflammation in the brain, and also a high dose of Omega 3 in gummy form.  I started doing this perhaps 2 or 3 weeks ago.

Last week (Wednesday 2/3/10), Evan read me a book for the very first time.  This was a tremendously wonderful thing.  I thought it was unusual, but just thought perhaps he has learned it and I didn't realize it somehow.  Today, his teacher called me out of the blue and bragged on the change she has seen.  She says he is super alert and even cracking jokes!  She even mentioned the sudden ability to read.  I'm just blown away!  I think I am actually on the right track here.  It's so wonderful to see these things.  I've noticed small things myself which are very positive.

I'm also quite happy to report that Evan's thyroid levels are now within normal bounds...no medication used.  Only supplements.  People, this stuff WORKS.

If you'd like to read about how Vitamin D can help with inflammation and in turn help the brain, here are some great links:

http://nephropal.blogspot.com/2009/08/inflammation-and-nf-kb.html

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/getting-vitamin-d-right.html

http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.com/2008/11/brain-arachidonic-acid-alzheimers.html

Friday, February 5, 2010

Creatine Deficiencies - A (not so) Novel Approach

As I was mentioning in my prior entry, Evan seems to be suffering some creatine deficiencies.  I've gotten an updated set of labs done as of this morning, so I will know his starting point.  I've ordered some creatine supplement such as the type body builders use.  I plan to start supplementing him starting tomorrow morning.  I was wondering why no one has thought of this approach to help these kids and other individuals as its a major cause of mental handicap and a common issue in the family of leukodystophy diseases.  My sister forwarded this article to me earlier today of a documented case that this approach was used.

http://www.ashg.org/genetics/ashg05s/f205.htm

In this article, the child had low creatine and at 16 months of age was only functioning at a 7 month old level. After being supplemented with 400 mg/kg/d (400 mg per kg of weight) of creatine per day, growth rate accelerated to the normal range. At 18 months she showed developmental age of 10 months, a clear increase in development. Creatine dose was increased to 600 mg/kg/d at 20months and at 29 months she showed a developmental age of 23 months and (80% and 86% of chronologic age).


Holy cow!  I'm so excited to try this!! 

All the same, I should expect some gain from this. Studies have shown that creatine supplementation boosts cognitive ability even in normal adults.

Check out this blurb from Wikipedia:

Cognitive ability


A placebo-controlled double-blind experiment found that vegetarians who took 5 grams of creatine per day for six weeks showed a significant improvement on two separate tests of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices, and the backward digit span test from the WAIS. The treatment group was able to repeat longer sequences of numbers from memory and had higher overall IQ scores than the control group. The researchers concluded that "supplementation with creatine significantly increased intelligence compared with placebo."[20] A subsequent study found that creatine supplements improved cognitive ability in the elderly.[21] A study on young adults (0.03 g/kg/day for six weeks; only 2 g/day for 150-pound individual) failed, however, to find any improvements.[22]