ALS Help

June 23, 2008

 Until Dr. Wright wrote about it in the April issue of Nutrition & Healing, I didn’t know all that much about Lou Gehrig’s disease. What I found out from that article, and the subsequent research I’ve done, is nothing short of horrifying.

This condition, technically known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, is a degenerative disease that progressively paralyzes its victims, causing them first to lose function of their hands and feet, then of their trunk and torso muscles, and ultimately eliminates their ability to speak, chew, and even breathe on their own. In essence, ALS traps people in their own bodies, leaving them to die a helpless, completely paralyzed death.

Even more frightening is that, until very recently, no one had any idea what causes ALS and there were no promising treatments for it. But researchers from Harvard… have uncovered one potential cause, and, as Dr. Wright told readers in the April issue of Nutrition & Healing, another recent study points to an all-natural therapy that could offer some much-needed hope to those people suffering from this devastating disease.

Let’s start with the potential cause. After tracking the exposure to 12 different chemicals of over 1 million participants of the Cancer Prevention Study II for 15 years, the Harvard researchers found that those people who came in regular contact with formaldehyde were 34 percent more likely to develop ALS than people with no exposure to it. And, unfortunately, formaldehyde isn’t just found in high school biology labs: It’s also in numerous commonly used products like shampoo, cosmetics, glue, and even permanent press fabrics.

So completely eliminating your exposure to formaldehyde might be more difficult than you’d think. Which is why the discovery Dr. Wright revealed in the April Nutrition & Healing issue is even more important.

In February, the medical journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study showing that the mineral lithium can significantly delay the progression of ALS (to read the full Nutrition & Healing article, subscribers can download the April issue for free by visiting www.wrightnewsletter.com and logging on to the Archives with the username and password listed on page 8 of your most recent newsletter).

The quantities used in the study were larger than the ones Dr. Wright typically recommends for general brain anti-aging, but, unless you’re already battling ALS, the brain-protective doses are also likely to be enough to help ward off some at least some of the damage done by exposure to those everyday sources of formaldehyde. The dose Dr. Wright recommends is 10 to 20 milligrams of lithium (as aspartate or orotate) daily.

He also always recommends that anyone taking lithium also take a teaspoon or two of flaxseed oil (or other essential fatty acid-containing oil) along with 400 IU of vitamin E (as mixed tocopherols) each day.

Yours in good health,

Amanda Ross
Editor
Nutrition & Healing