Subject:
          [CO-CURE] MED,RES: Amino Acid Therapy for GWS and CFS
     Date:
          Mon, 18 Jan 1999 11:59:05 -0500
     From:
          Carolyn Viviani <carolynv@INX.NET>
 Reply-To:
          Co-Cure-Mod@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU
       To:
          CO-CURE@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU
 
 

This week we had two guests on the CFS radio show, Dr. Dennis Gersten and his patient, Greg Bennett who is a veteran of the Gulf War and has Gulf War Syndrome. They discuss the successful use of amino acid therapy in Greg's long road to recovery from the effects of GWS. This show inspires hope that there is a possible was of treating the devastating effects of diseases such as CFS and GWS and shows that improvement may be possible. It also shows the very important effects that amino acids play in our lives.

                             CFS Radio Program
                            January 17th, 1999
                        Roger G. Mazlen, M.D. Host
                                   with
                             Dr. Dennis Gersten
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Dr. Mazlen
 Good morning everybody. We're going to be talking to Dr. Dennis Gersten
 and Greg Bennet in California very shortly. I want to welcome Dr. Dennis
 Gersten back on the show. He was our guest on February 1st, 1998 and I'm
 delighted to have him back. I'm delighted to have him back as a guest and
 also because he's a personal friend and he's brought with him Greg Bennet
 who'll be on the show. We'll be talking to Greg shortly who is a Gulf War
 veteran, a member of the 82nd Airborne who'll be telling us what happened
 to him in the Gulf War and how he got Gulf War Syndrome and Dennis will be
 talking about treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Gulf War Syndrome
 specifically. Dennis, welcome to our show. We're so glad to have you back
 today.

 Dr. Gersten
 Oh, thank you very much, it's great to be back here.

 Dr. Mazlen
 And we're delighted because we can talk to you and get an update on some
 of the things that you're doing. For the listening audience I want to
 mention that Dennis is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and
 Neurology. He practices psychiatry and metabolic medicine in Solana Beach,
 California. He specializes in treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and also
 more recently Gulf War Syndrome has become a focus for him and if you need
 to talk to Dennis later on after the show, in the future you can reach him
 at 1-800-211-5215. Dennis what's going on with this Chronic Fatigue
 Syndrome and Gulf War Syndrome as things are now, as you're doing it
 today?

 Dr. Gersten
 Yes, let me update you. Yes, I thought it would be great to come on your
 show and actually tell you some of the results of what's happening with
 amino acid therapy. In fact, I think shortly after I was on your show, I
 offered to treat at no charge as many Gulf War vets as I could possibly
 handle and the reason I did that was because the results in treating CFS
 have been so so good, like in the range of 80% of the people have a good
 response and of those at least 50% are having an excellent response.
 Because of that I wanted to offer this to the Gulf War vets and when Greg
 comes on, he knows all the data and statistics. I believe, right now
 there's somewhere in the range of 200,000 vets who are on the registry as
 having some kind of health related problem. That's out of about 700,000
 vets, which is over 40% of the vets have something seriously wrong with
 them. You know, it's time to have that addressed. I believe that Gulf War
 Syndrome in many ways is quite similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In
 fact, it may be difficult to tell them apart except, I think you have
 different pathogens involved. You have pretty much the same amino acid
 abnormalities with the exception that in terms of your chemical
 sensitivity, that's showing up higher, and that's represented by the amino
 acids methionine and cystine. Those will be depleted when you have
 chemical sensitivity problems.

 Dr. Gersten
 So, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or MCS is found in a higher prevalence
 in vets is what you're saying--veterans of the Gulf War.

 Dr. Gersten
 Right. I don't have a huge database on that. That is my experience.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Listen, that's fine. You know, we need all the information we can get on
 this. Why don't we let Greg come in here and tell us what happened to him
 at this point in time. Greg, what happened to you after the Gulf War? Were
 you sick already over there or did you get sick here in the States?

 Greg
 Actually, I got sick here in the States. When I first got back from the
 Gulf War after getting back a couple of months I started telling people in
 my family and people close to me that I just didn't feel quite the same as
 I used to. I just didn't have the same physical being about myself. I just
 could never pinpoint exactly what was wrong with me. I just knew something
 was out of kilter with me and as time went on as the years went by, I just
 continued getting sicker and sicker and sicker and I tried to stay
 positive about it. I tried to keep my  back to it and not pay too much
 attention but about two or three years ago, my health just completely
 collapsed.

 Dr. Mazlen
 I heard you were bedridden for a year.

 Greg
 Yes, I was literally down for a year. I had to move out with my wife and
 move in with my mom and have 24 hours a day care.

 Dr. Mazlen
 How much weight did you lose, Greg?

 Greg
 I lost about 38 pounds in about 7 months time without changing my diet
 much at all.

 Dr. Mazlen
 That's incredible. What was your exercise tolerance? What could you do?

 Greg
 Before, in the 82nd Airborne we had a high standard of physical fitness
 and I carried it on after I got out of the military and I used to run 3 to
 5 times a week. I used to lift weights, played on the basketball team. But
 once this illness hit, you know full steam, I was debilitated. I literally
 couldn't even walk.

 Dr. Mazlen
 I understand from Dr. Gersten that he was the 30th doctor that you had
 seen.

 Greg
 Yes, I had gotten so sick that I was just reaching and grasping for
 anybody with any information that I could get. You know I had seen doctor
 after doctor and spoken with doctor after doctor and tried many
 approaches, some with a little success, nothing really that got me excited
 about "maybe there's a chance of me getting back to my health," cause it
 just wasn't happening. But after getting a hold of Dr. Gersten things have
 started changing.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Well, we're going to go into that after our break, but I wanted to ask
 you, you did go to Dr. Garth Nicolson and he did diagnose you with some
 kind of mycoplasma. What did you have?

 Greg
 He diagnosed me with mycoplasma pneumonia, mycoplasma incognitus and
 mycoplasma penetrans. So, I have three species of the mycoplasma.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Wow, you sure have more than your share!

 Greg
 More than my share and more than I wanted.

 Dr. Mazlen
 And he put you on antibiotics for it. Are you still on treatment for that?

 Greg
 I am but I'm trying to get away from it. I've been doing that for about a
 year and a half and as you can imagine, a year and a half of antibiotics
 has some side effects. I'm trying to work with Dr. Gersten in more of a
 natural way to beat this thing.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Well, I just want to point out to the listening audience that you'll find
 that the mycoplasma species and mycoplasma fermentans, incognitus and
 pneumoniae is common also to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients and Dr.
 Aristo Vodjani recently published a paper showing significant percentage
 of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients compared to the controls have
 infections with these organisms and, of course, in Gulf War Syndrome we
 know from Dr. Nicolson's work, also about this. We're going to talk a lot
 with both Dr. Gersten and also with Greg right after our break, but I
 wanted to ask you, Greg, by the time you got to Dr. Gersten what was your
 mental state. Were you depressed? Were you feeling really down?

 Greg
 Yes, I was down and depressed. It wasn't like a clinical depression or
 anything, but I mean I was getting desperate and God sent me the right
 guy.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Well listen, we're all thrilled that you're feeling better. Were you on
 the battle field in Iraq where you were exposed to some of their
 weaponry?

 Greg
 Yes, where I was there wasn't much battle but I was on the front lines on
 the day the ground war started, I charged right into Iraq and spent about
 45 days about 150 miles into Iraq and went through all the Iraqi bases in
 camp and helped demolition a lot of their stuff and a lot of their
 equipment, so I mean I was right up there in the front and I have to say
 our chemical alarms were going off nearly daily.

 Dr. Mazlen
 That's an important observation. And is it also true that the 82nd
 Airborne had a particularly high incidence of illness after the war.

 Greg
 Correct. It's really hard to get information, especially out of the 82nd
 Airborne, but people I've been in contact with back in North Carolina say
 that everybody they know, a lot of the friends I've spoken to, are ill,
 that a whole lot of us were ill. Actually we had the highest percentage of
 illness in the country, I've heard.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Well, that's a very significant fact and I thank you for relating it to
 the listening audience.

 <Break>

 We're going right back to Dr. Dennis Gersten to tell me what did you do
 for Greg when you found him like this. Obviously, he was in deep trouble.

 Dr. Gersten
 First let me say good morning to Greg, also.

 Greg
 Good morning doctor. We haven't greeted each other here yet.

 Dr. Gersten
 You know, Greg was tested and he doesn't really know this in terms of the
 abnormalities, but in terms of his amino acid profile, Greg was deficient
 in 51% of his amino acids. Pretty significant.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Very, very significant.

 Dr. Gersten
 Yes, and the human body is 75% amino acids by dry weight, so when you have
 that kind of abnormality, you have a pretty severe condition. 70% of the
 aminos that govern brain metabolism were quite depleted. All the ones
 governing muscle metabolism which are your branch chain amino acids plus
 glutamine, those were all depleted. 100% of the aminos governing sugar
 metabolism were depleted. Those are glycine, alanine and serine. His GI
 tract, his immune system, his chemical sensitivity markers, those were all
 depleted. So, he was put on a pretty extensive program of amino acids plus
 vitamin and mineral cofactors to support the program, and really the
 toughest thing with someone with a chronic illness is helping them sustain
 themselves until the program kicks in. Because it's not an overnight thing
 for someone who's been chronically ill. Generally, it's one or two months
 before you start seeing the positive affects, so the interesting thing
 with Greg was even though he started improving, I believe at about 4 weeks
 into the program, I would say it took months before he would actually
 believe that something positive was going on. And that's because he had
 seen these 30 doctors and health care practitioners and there's a big
 problem when hope and faith and trust start to go down the toilet. Then
 you have to really act if you're the first doctor the person's ever met,
 you've got to hang in there, learn their story, their history, you know
 everything about them until you have trust established. Trust in the
 doctor-patient relationship and trust even more so in the human modality
 that you're using. I think that Greg can definitely relate to what I'm
 talking about here.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Well, it's certainly obvious that you have the trust. Now, how quickly did
 he respond to your program?

 Dr. Gersten
 I think in about one month he started reporting that he was better. His
 energy was better. And the first thing that he told me that really struck
 him was he was at work and there are a number of things that he had not
 done at work for years I guess, and he spontaneously picked up a heavy box
 and he just tossed it up into a higher rafter. That's my image of what
 happened and then after he did that, he just said to himself, "My
 goodness, I haven't been able to do that in years and years and years." So
 that first burst started to kick in at about 30 days. And it really has
 been solidifying over 6 months. It's been pretty much a steady state of
 improvement with the exception of some relapses of primarily the
 mycoplasma which has caused. I believe, about two setbacks in this period
 of about 6 or 7 months.

 Dr. Mazlen
 But you told me, and I think it's outstanding and I want the audience to
 know, you said to me that Greg gained approximately  50 pounds of muscle
 mass.

 Dr. Gersten
 Yes, Greg why don't you fill in the details there?

 Greg
 Yes, I even called Dr. Gersten on it. My wife started taking notice that I
 was literally gaining muscle--she has even claimed that I've gained size
 from this, you know my arms, legs, everything are just bigger--and as time
 was going on I started getting more and more bigger, stronger, my arms
 were getting bigger. I even had friends coming to me who had been through
 with me the whole time and they were saying, "Well Greg, you're back in
 the gym lifting weights and stuff again." And I was really in the initial
 couple of months I was trying to keep it low key, not do much exercise and
 really I didn't do anything to acquire the muscle that came out with it.

 Dr. Mazlen
 That's extraordinary, that's a wonderful response. Let me just take a
 quick question from our listening audience. On line 1 Jeeney has a
 question on Gulf War Syndrome. Welcome Jeeney. What is your question to
 our guests on the Gulf War Syndrome?

 Jeeney
 Well, Greg was talking about being on the antibiotic treatment and I
 wanted to know, being that they are finding the penetrans, pneumoniae and
 fermentans in CFS people, what are the adverse effects of doing all these
 antibiotics and if there is something alternatively, what is it?

 Dr. Mazlen
 OK. Dennis, you want to comment on the antibiotic side effects? I know
 candida would be a problem.

 Dr. Gersten
 Yes, sure, that really is a big problem. Greg, he's  in a catch-22 here
 which I'm confident we're going to see the other side of this problem. But
 with antibiotic use, especially with chronic use, you wipe out your normal
 bacteria flora, as it's called, in your GI tract, which allows yeast to
 overgrow and Greg has had pretty serious problems with generalized
 candidiasis as a result of the chronic antibiotic use. He's been tested
 through Great Smokies, he was in a GI tract there and he definitely
 carried the candida. The nice thing about doing the testing is you find
 out the sensitivities. That is, you find out what will kill the yeast and
 you put the person on that program. You know as well as high potency
 acidolphilus products and an anti candida diet which is a tough thing.
 It's a very strict diet, no sugars, nothing fermented, no yeast etc. So,
 Greg has been on that program, I think sometimes it's tough to get at a
 100% with that program as it is for anybody to be at 100% with that diet.
 I think in terms of long term the idea is to build up his immune system as
 much as we possibly can so eventually he can kill it off, we can get
 control of the candida through this process and we can look at natural
 treatment for the mycoplasma and that's definitely an experimentation, but
 right now, or shortly actually, we're going to be starting with a very
 high potency colloidal silver.

 Dr. Mazlen
 That's not something that's been really extensively tested yet, the high
 potency form. Right?

 Dr. Gersten
 No, it has not been extensively tested.

 Dr. Mazlen
 But it offers hope for another way of approach. There are also herbal
 preparations too, I want to point out that help out with the yeast, like
 olive leaf preparations and a number of others that have antifungal
 properties. Dennis, of course knows a great deal about that. You can reach
 him, by the way,  as I mentioned before and I'll mention again. Dr.
 Gersten can be reached through the 1-800-211-5215 number. Also Greg Bennet
 can be reached through his email, if you'd like to discuss his experience
 with him, gegnjule@pacbell.net, either way, or you can call my office at
 516-352-9483 if you're having any problem and we'll supply you with
 numbers where you can reach either Dr. Gersten or Greg Bennet.

 <Break>

 We're back in the Chronic Fatigue chat room with our guest, Dr. Dennis
 Gersten and Greg Bennet, veteran of the Gulf War. First of all, Greg, I
 want to thank you for your service to our country. I'm really sorry that
 you got sick like this as a result of it and for all the others who have
 the same or similar illnesses. We all owe you a vote of thanks. I want to
 ask, because I know there is some good news. What is your exercise ability
 now? You're doing a lot so I want to cheer up the audience and let them
 know how well you got.

 Greg
 It's been incredible. As Dr. Gersten said, as time was going on I started
 feeling better and better and as I learned through this ordeal, I wanted
 to take things carefully cause I have a way with me, I just want to go
 headstrong and go fast with something, but I learned, with this I have to
 take it slow and take my exercise slow, but I decided that I would take up
 a sport that I could do at my own limit and stop when I want and do at my
 own limit. I'm so competitive so I started taking up surfing and would
 just get out in the water a little bit and paddle around and since I've
 actually gone about the last two months in a row every single week and my
 strength is getting more and more and actually it was great having told
 Dr. Gersten, I used to be an avid runner. I'd come home from work and go
 for a jog every night and since I've become ill I've missed it terribly
 and it's been about two years since I've been able to even get out and
 take a jog and this last week for the first time in two years I actually
 went out and jogged for a mile straight at a pretty quick pace, came back,
 I was definitely sore the next day but it was a great thing for me.

 Dr. Mazlen
 It's a triumph, we're delighted, we're excited for you. And we also have
 to thank Dr. Gersten too because he's brought you to this point. Dennis,
 you had mentioned to me, we had spoken before the show, that there's a
 chronic low level malnutrition in our country that predisposes people to
 get these types of illnesses. Could you comment on that?

 Dr. Gersten
 You know, we were talking about why do people have these types of amino
 acid depletions and why is it so hard to fix. In terms of nutrition in
 this country, something really terrible is going on because you have an
 epidemic in my generation right now, the 40's and 50's of people of either
 exhaustion syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, superimposed now with Gulf
 War Syndrome. The U.S. government released a document in 1936 which stated
 that the soil needed to be replenished of its minerals every three years
 or else it would be fairly worthless. Now that has not happened since '36.
 So, number 1, the minerals are shot. We're living in an environment
 polluted on all levels. We live in an electromagnetic field. We breath
 toxic air, 20% of the water in this country has been designated as unfit
 for drinking. So, we're really barraged by an environment and nutrition
 that is truly not supporting us. We're not getting what we need and so
 we're predisposed to having some of these chronic conditions. I'm not
 saying that for Greg's situation, I can't say that. But much more if you
 look at what's happening across the board, something is going on.

 Dr. Mazlen
 Indeed it must. You know we're going to have come back and invite you both
 as guests to reappear on our show to give us an update on what's
 happening, both with specifically Greg Bennet and also with any other vets
 that you may be treating. Can you just tell me Dennis, are you still
 willing to treat some of these veterans of the Gulf War for nothing? Does
 that still hold?

 Dr. Gersten
 Yes, that still holds. Can I give out the website so they can just print
 out the information?

 Dr. Mazlen
 Certainly.

 Dr. Gersten
 The website is http://www.aminoacidpower.com
 There's hundreds of pages of online information there.
 

 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.

 Previous transcripts can be viewed
 http://members.aol.com/rgm1/private/transcr.htm

 Previous shows can be heard at
 http://www.cfsaudio.4biz.net/cfsradio.htm

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