Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; CRP vs ESR

Hi all,

I just had a blood test for several things.
liver is ok (strange enough), but thyroid is low and energy-cyle is hampered

My naturopath checked the crp (C-reactive protein) instead of the ESR to measure AS-activity.

some data, linking crp to artery inflammation

research is now showing that CRP is both a key marker of inflammation leading to future acute coronary events, but also that CRP itself may contribute to the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis.

Some researchers now believe that CRP itself may be a previously unrecognized cause of heart disease ... Although LDL has long been considered the best measure of heart attack risk, about half of people who have heart attacks don't have high cholesterol ...


I have not much pain/inflammation, so i assume my esr is low. Yet, my crp showed high
(0-9 is normal mine was 72), yet much higher values are possible I read on the net. He detected also a candida infection/leaky gut last month, which already showed improvement on the second test yesterday. He did not link the candida to the crp-elevation

Some questions:
what does elevated crp indicate in AS
what does it indicate when crp is high and esr is low
is 72 really high, he called 72 insane high

He states from this reading that my as is active and wants to fuzzle around with my immune system, which means fuzzy injections like with EPD: exact mehod not yet discussed. I am of course quite reluctant to that sort of stuff.

comments are appreceated, thanks in advance

Arjan

Hi Arjan, although i have no idea on the numbers value i have been looking at crp as a guide myself, glad you posted this.
Two questions - did he/she use the lactulose/mannitol test for LGS?
How did he detect candida?
Also i would not expect a naturopath (ie natural medecine) to use injections at all - NEVER.

Ted
proAS_KickAS

Hi Arjan,

I saw the information you posted on CRP in regards to heart disease previously and that it was a better measure than cholesterol.

No idea of the #'s either.

I agree with Ted.... funny a naturopath is talking about injections. The two that I saw for a brief time never talked of injections... but neither believed much in this diet either but rather a rotational diet and hence the reason I am no longer seeing them.

Tim

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it - Helen Keller

Arjan,

Acute phase proteins are important in innate defense against microbes (mostly bacteria and protozoa) and in limiting tissue damage caused by microbial infection, trauma, malignancy and other diseases e.g. rheumatoid arthritis. They are also important in tissue repair. These molecules include C-reactive protein ... Quantitation of CRP in the serum of patients with inflammatory diseases, e.g. rheumatoid arthritis, is used as a way to assess the current inflammatory activity of the disease. High levels of CRP signify a high level of disease activity. - so says a secondhand student text I found.

So in answer to your questions:

(1) Elevated CRP might indicate increased AS activity, or it might be indicative of some other infection.

(2) ESR is not elevated in 25% of patients whose AS is active, so high CRP and low ESR is possible in active AS. Presumably that's why they do both tests.

(3) 72 what?

Although CRP might be usually associated with bacterial infection, presumably it could be associated with a yeast infection; worth further research. For instance , I found this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1812935&dopt=Abstract

And I don't see why you should start worrying about the ticker!

Edited by bilko on 04/09/03 03:34 AM (server time).

Hi,

my crp is 72 mg/l wile normal levels are between 0 and 9 mg/l

I was surprised i had any inflammation-marker beeing elevated, as i do not feel inflamed. This raises some concern as i thought the AS was dealt with and it was now a matter of liver boosting and gut-repair to get well alltogether. Concern also rises because elevated crp (well below 72 mg/l) is linked to long term cadiovascular health risks.

The candida was cheked with a microscope, with 400 times magnification they can see the candida-spores. The gut beeing leaky was also checked with a micoscope, they claim that the edge of a blood-drop should be sharp with a healthy gut, and it is broken with a leakey one. After a month of Glutamine and low sugar diet the edge of the blood-drop was indeed less broken. He has written a book on the candida problem as he states it is the current epidemic, one out of 5 of his patients has it. So for him it's daily buisiness and i can assume his protcol gives results.

But this is also about a difference in view between me and the doc, he states AS is a result of an immune system attacking a bacterial infection that already has disappeared, so the immune system is mailfunctioning and should be desensitised. He has artritis patients having great benefit with this approach, combined with blood type O diet, which is also low starch.

But in my opinion, when the infection has disappeared, why has a diet alone such a dramatic effect?

=>Anyone has commments of this? We all benefit greatly from this diet, but hardly any people completely recover from this condition.
-Is it because the infection is very very persistent or could it indeed be a 'gost' infection.
-But if it is a gost infection, then why why why the diet has this effect??
-Or is it that we are indeed having an oversensitive immune system due to a former infection and the diet removes stimulation by reducing intestinal flora. Then the apprach should be desensitation instead of fighting a non existent infection.
-Or is there an infection and then fuzzing around with the immune system is basically the same approach as NSAID treatment. You suppress a normal response of the immune system.

The elevated crp does not give any clue, as it could indicate an infection as well as a response to a non existent infection. And why do i not feel inflamed with this elevated crp??

So how do you establish if the infection is really there, any thoughts of that?

basic questions ..

Arjan

Arjan - according to the Ebringer cross-tolerance hypothesis, once the klebsiella is greatly reduced in numbers the immune response to it is reduced and then so is the autoimmune response. It is the reduction in klebsiella by diet that achieves the desensitation. However we are left with memory lymphocytes ready to produce autoantibodies that attack HLA B27 should we start feeding the klebs again. It's true we are never cured but the diet does achieve remission. So I think your naturopath is wrong in his thinking, and I still think it worth researching whether the candida could be responsible for the elevated CRP. If you treat that first and then CRP falls things would be clearer.

well Bilko, actually I meant by desensitation the following:

-suppose there is no kp infection, but there has been one
-as a result of this former infection, we get a huge, oversensitive immune response to normal Kp levels
-this reponse is active against our own tissues due to the B-27 resemblance

I mean now by desensitation decreasing the immune reponse to normal levels of kp, this means fuzzing around with the immune system.

This is different then diet-appraoch, which brings down the immune response by bringing down Kp-levels.

comments on this theory?

Arjan

Your theory assumes that the autoantibodies (autoimmune response) remain very active even after the normal immune response to klebsiella has declined to low levels. There is no evidence for this; if the autoimmunity became 'self feeding' the diet would not work.

Arjan,
I agree with the naturopath. I don't think there is an active infection or dysbiosis in most of us. On the other hand the bacteria which cause AS, most likely Klebsiella, are present in all of us even if they are not detected in a stool analysis. The problem is once the auto immune respons is settled we are very sensitive to these bacteria even if they occur in normal amounts. What I think the diet does is not fighting an infection but shifting the balance towards very low Klebsiella etc. In this way we can achieve the immune response will not be triggered but as Bilko said it is still present. So I think it is like you call it: "Or is it that we are indeed having an oversensitive immune system due to a former infection and the diet removes stimulation by reducing intestinal flora. Then the apprach should be desensitation instead of fighting a non existent infection". With the change that we will still need to keep fighting to achieve desensitation. Remains the question why the CRP is so high especially if you're feeling good (unless you previously noted that ESR etc were not in line with disease activity). Maybe you should opt for a second measurement together with an ESR before doing more drastic things.
Gerard

"Walk gently, breathe peacefully, laugh hysterically." -Nelson Mandela-

I don't agree that we necessarily remain very sensitive to the bacteria. The experience of many of us is that after a sufficient length of time on the diet a level of starch tolerance is achieved; occasional starchy meals can be eaten with no ill effect. But continual starchy eating will eventually bring back active AS.