Heat, false heat and CFS

[Guest guest]

The following hypothesis ( of which there is supposedly some evidence) was

recently pointed out to me, and aligns very much with many of the symptoms I

have documented in horses, eg a depressing of FT4 levels when thyroxine is

supplemented, as though the body was compensating to keep the metabolism

lowered, dehydrated appearance to the skin, 'Lv and gut symptoms, summer

anhydrosis etc. I could not think of a mechanism for this, but this seems to

offer a faesable one - I wonder what your opinion would be Vinod?

 

The basic premise is mitochondrial malfunction leading to reduced ATP levels

and thertefore heart muscle myopathy, leading to low cardiac output. I

quote:

 

This explains the symptoms of CFS

The job of the heart is to maintain blood pressure. If the blood pressure

falls, organs start to fail. If the heart is working inadequately as a pump

then the only way blood pressure can be sustained is by shutting down blood

supply to organs. Organs are shut down in terms of priority, i.e. the skin

first, then muscles, followed by liver, gut, brain and finally the heart,

lung and kidney. As these organ systems shut down, this creates further

problems for the body in terms of toxic overload, susceptibility to viruses

which damage mitochondria further, thus exacerbating all the problems of the

CFS sufferer.

 

 

Effects on the Skin - If you shut down the blood supply to the skin, this

has two main effects. The first is that the skin is responsible for

controlling the temperature of the body. This means that CFS patients become

intolerant of heat. If the body gets too hot then it cannot lose heat

through the skin (because it has no blood supply) and the core temperature

increases. The only way the body can compensate for this is by switching off

the thyroid gland (which is responsible for the level of metabolic activity

in the body and hence heat generation) and so one gets a compensatory

underactive thyroid. This alone worsens the problems of fatigue.

The second problem is that if the micro-circulation in the skin is shut

down, then the body cannot sweat. This is a major way through which toxins,

particularly heavy metals, pesticides and volatile organic compounds are

excreted. Therefore the CFS sufferer?s body is much better at accumulating

toxins, which of course further damage mitochondria.

 

2. Symptoms in Muscles If the blood supply to muscles is impaired, then

muscles quickly run out of oxygen when one starts to exercise. With no

oxygen in the muscles the cells switch over to anaerobic metabolism, which

produces lactic acid and it is this that makes muscles ache so much.

 

As well as the above problem, muscles in the CFS patient have very poor

stamina because the mitochondria which supply them with energy are

malfunctioning.

 

3. Symptoms in the Liver and Gut Poor blood supply to the gut results in

inefficient digestion, poor production of digestive juices and leaky gut

syndrome. Leaky gut syndrome causes many other problems such as allergies,

autoimmunity, malabsorption, etc., which further compound the problems of

CFS.

 

If liver circulation is inadequate, this will result in poor detoxification,

not just of heavy metals, pesticides and volatile organic compounds, but

also toxins produced as a result of fermentation in the gut again further

poisoning the mitochondria.

 

4. Effects on the Brain Last October I attended a conference sponsored by

the late Dr John Richardson. A Canadian physician Byron Hyde showed us some

functional scans of the brains of CFS patients. If I had not known the

diagnosis, I would have diagnosed strokes. This is because the blood supply

to some area of the brain was so impaired. The default is temporary and with

rest, blood supply recovers. However, this explains the multiplicity of

brain symptoms suffered from, such as poor short term memory, difficulty

multi-tasking, slow mental processing and so on. Furthermore brain cells are

not particularly well stocked with mitochondria and therefore they run out

of energy very quickly.

 

5. Effects on the Heart There are two effects on the heart. The first effect

of poor micro-circulation to the heart is disturbance of the electrical

conductivity which causes dysrhythmias. Many patients with chronic fatigue

syndrome complain of palpitations, missed heart beats or whatever. This is

particularly the case in patients with poisoning by chemicals since the

chemicals are also directly toxic to nerve cells.

 

The second obvious result is poor exercise tolerance. Heart muscle fatigues

in just the same way that other muscles fatigue. Symptomatically this causes

chest pain and fatigue. In the longer term it can cause heart valve defects

because the muscles which normally hold the mitral valve open also fatigue.

 

Full article at:

 

http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/article.cfm?id=373

 

 

Jackie

 

 

 

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