How Lab Reports Mislead Us: Free Testosterone vs. Bound Testosterone
Men who have been told that their free testosterone levels aren’t high enough should know that scientists are still debating about whether or not the idea of “free” testosterone has any relevance physiologically or not. This whole idea of “free testosterone” as a relevant concept is propagated through lab results that note free testosterone levels and testosterone that is bound by Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) or by Albumin, but in the scientific community this whole idea of free testosterone vs. bound testosterone has not even been given the credibility of being a theory. It is known as the Free Hormone Hypothesis because it is merely a conjecture...a hypothesis. So, if you're a man and your doctor is trying to sell you testosterone injections of growth hormone treatments by waving a lab report in your face, remember that no one really knows whether Sex Hormone Binding Globulin can release testosterone easily or not. Testosterone that is bound by Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG) and by Albumin (Alb) may be release-able. Albumin especially, is likely to release testosterone at crucial moments.
It is possible that low free testosterone levels on a lab report is literally a useless piece of data that has no real meaning in terms of human health, but because it's on the lab report, it seems important and factual. So let’s add this tidbit to the basket of confusion regarding male reproductive hormones and just say that hormones are dynamic. A testosterogenic substance inside the body may change into an estrogenic substance moments after a lab sample is taken. Indeed, though mainstream science claims that estrogen can't change into testosterone, in reality, certain bacterial members of the gut flora can change estrogen into testosterone. And testosterone that is bound to a carrier molecule like SHBG or Albumin may be released to go to work inside of our human cells within milliseconds of lab samples being taken.
Read more here about testicular tanning and the fact that some microorganisms can, in fact change estrogen into testosterone in the human body.
In other words, hormones are shape-shifters. They can change into whatever they need to be inside the body. And they can travel like genies on a blood transport protein like Albumin to get from point A to point B and then transform themselves via magical enzyme-potions. Some of these transformations may be influenced by our minds and our thoughts. There are intimate relationships, after all, between the reproductive hormones and neurotransmitters. And some areas of the brain, like the hypothalamus, which works with the autonomic nervous system and our stress-detecting centers, also work with directing the release, direction, and format of reproductive hormones in the body.
At this point, the reader might be tempted to start taking notes. Or perhaps give up on the topic of reproductive hormones completely. This stuff seems so technical. But don’t give up just yet. Let’s not go into the super-technical realm on this topic. Metaphors and stories can be incredibly helpful in understanding something as complex as reproductive hormones.
Let’s start by exploring the possibility that testosterone(s) and dopamine are intimate the way that men and women are sometimes intimate (this is not a metaphor with any political aim built into it regarding heterosexual or homosexual relationships, by the way–--I just need duality to make my point so please forgive my use of men and women in metaphors requiring duality and black-white concepts. In the world of logic and physiology, one could say that testosterone and dopamine have a bi-directional, yin-yang relationship. Testosterone influences dopamine and dopamine influences testosterone).
If testosterone and dopamine were a married couple, they would live together in the medial preoptic area of the brain. This is where these two busy neuro-hormones would hang out, spend time together, and make love to each other. If dopamine (as the wife in this metaphor) is a bit low, testosterone would be low too. Happy wife, happy life after all. But if testosterone comes home unhappy, dopamine would be similarly stressed.
Interestingly, though dopamine would tend to be viewed as a neurotransmitter that lives and works in the brain, neural programs for dopamine in regard to sex are found in the lower, lumbar area of the spinal cord. And though one might tend to think that testosterone would spend most of its time in the testicles or some other male reproductive organ, testosterone actually influences dopamine levels most from a position at the very center of the brain, roughly just behind the eyes.
The medial preoptic area is one of the most important areas of the brain that influences sexual behavior and sexual experience in both men and women. Testosterone, dopamine, oxytocin, and an array of other neurotransmitters and hormones live and work in this neighborhood though some of these neurohormones “commute” to other areas of the body to perform important work (shopping, picking up the mail, etc.). When these neurohormones make these commutes they often do so in order to facilitate our human relationships and how we relate to other people in a very general way. The amygdala is an important area of the brain where neurohormones do work pertaining to relationships, including sexual relationships.
Dopamine and the Amygdala
The amygdala is an almond-shaped structure in the middle of the brain. The amygdala is like the neighborhood school in our current metaphor. Dopamine is a teacher, or maybe even the principal at this school.Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that teaches us about our own experiences. A diet that contains plenty of the amino acids that convert easily into dopamine gives both children and adults the nutrients they need to learn from mistakes, create meaning around situations that are traumatic in their lives so that trauma-based stress can be released. Dopamine helps us learn from our experiences and then it helps us make positive decisions for ourselves on the basis of those past experiences and the meaning that we’ve ascribed to them.
These amino acids include:
- L-phenylalanine
- L-tyrosine, and
- L-dopa (the immediate precursor to dopamine)
But even if you consume these amino acids regularly, you still need to be able process them in order to ensure that they eventually turn into dopamine. In order to process these amino acids and ensure that they are properly converted, you need certain vitamins and minerals. The B-vitamins are particularly important (vitamin B6 in particular is vital, but the B-complex vitamins work best when taken together), though magnesium, zinc, and other trace minerals are also essential. Dopamine helps people process experience and information to ascribe meaning to it, so a deficiency of any of the amino acids, vitamins, or minerals can literally cause people to become emotionally stuck in negative patterns of thinking or behavior. Even if a person gets enough of the dopamine-precursor amino acids in their diet or via supplementation, if they’re deficient in any one of the cofactor nutrients required to convert those amino acids into dopamine, they’ll experience symptoms of low dopamine. As soon as they correct the nutrient deficiency, the dopamine precursor amino acids can be converted, and then the problems related to low dopamine will fade away (since there will actually be dopamine in the person’s body).
For example, if you have a car accident that is traumatic, you’ll use dopamine to process this experience and decide how to ascribe meaning to it. Dopamine in the amygdala will help you decide if you should view this car accident as something that is your fault, as something that could’ve been avoided, or as something that was inevitable and even meaningful and important, if not positive despite its traumatic attributes. Dopamine is the decision-making neurotransmitter. When a person gets low on dopamine, they make poorer decisions than they normally would.
For example, if you drink a pot of coffee early in the day to give yourself a jolt to complete a big work project, your dopamine neurons will puke out huge quantities of dopamine into the neural synapses / gaps in your brain. Your dopamine neurons will then be empty. Your body requires at least 4 hours to produce more dopamine from natural L-dopa if there is natural L-dopa available in the brain for conversion. And the dopamine receptors in the synaptic gap must soak up all that dopamine that your neurons have dumped into it the way that flowers soak up rainwater.
On a normal day, for a normal person with a good diet containing plenty of amino acids and the supporting vitamins and minerals necessary for the conversion of natural L-dopa into dopamine, and when this person doesn’t drink a pot of coffee, the dopamine neurons are full of plenty of dopamine. In the synaptic gaps between dopamine neurons, dopamine hangs like a pleasant mist of decision-making juices that are ever-present, as needed, for those little dopamine receptor-flowers.
Unfortunately, however, when a huge quantity of dopamine is dumped into the synaptic gaps with the dopamine receptor-flowers, the flowers can literally drown and die. Amphetamines, caffeine, Adderall, Ritalin and other ADHD drugs, and some street drugs like meth can cause a deluge of dopamine in these neural synapses, which then kills dopamine receptors if these drugs are administered daily for even just a few days. A flower that receives too much rain for one day isn’t necessarily going to die as long as the rain soaks into the ground and can be utilized by that plant or the plants around it. But a flower that has to sit in a pool of water for a week or longer is likely to die. This is what happens to the dopamine receptor-flowers when a person takes a dopamine-releasing drug that causes an unnatural amount of dopamine to be dumped into the gap between neurons.
Your garden of dopamine receptors in the amygdala and in other areas of the brain can easily get flooded out if you’re regularly using one or more substances (such as coffee) that cause dopamine to be released in huge quantities. If your dopamine receptor-flowers die, it will be harder for you to think clearly. It will be harder for you to make wise decisions for yourself. You may find that you feel addicted to whatever it was that caused the initial, massive release of dopamine (social media, coffee, etc.).
On the other hand, if you drink a pot of coffee every day for a week, your dopamine neurons won’t be able to produce dopamine fast enough to keep up with the release of dopamine. So while, at first when you start drinking a pot of coffee every day, your dopamine receptor-flowers might be flooded, within a relatively short period of time those same receptor flowers will be in a drought. There won’t be enough dopamine in the neurons to water the receptor-flowers regularly. So some of the receptors will die due to flooding. Others will die due to drought.
Thankfully, there are Ayurvedic plant-medicines like Mucuna pruriens and other members of the Fabaceae plant family (such as lima beans) that contain high amounts of L-Dopa that can recharge the dopamine neurons. Not only does Mucuna recharge the neurons, it helps restore that “mist” of dopamine that is consistently available to the dopamine receptor-flowers so they can start to regrow. It takes approximately 5 months for dopamine receptor flowers to regrow completely. Addicts who take Mucuna pruriens for 5 months often experience quite a renaissance of thinking and feeling at 5 months when the receptor-flowers regrow.
Unfortunately, these days, many of us are extremely low on dopamine. Being shut indoors or not being able to see other human faces smile at you can lead to low dopamine levels. COVID lockdowns and masking produced a pandemic of dopamine-related problems and it opened a Pandora’s box of addiction for many people who started drinking, doing drugs, or spending excessive amounts of time on social media to cope with being low on dopamine. And this is relevant to reproductive hormones because dopamine and testosterone work together in both men and women.
In reality, what your body needs and what it wants is to fill up the dopamine neurons (which are like watering cans) with healthy, natural dopamine molecules that can be released on demand for the dopamine receptor-flowers so that they stay healthy and robust. But when your dopamine watering can gets low on dopamine, you aren’t making your best decisions. You need that mist of dopamine available to you as an ever-present fuel for decision-making and thought. Otherwise you become susceptible to addiction. Social media capitalizes on this physiological fact to get people hooked and keep them hooked, for example.
This dopamine metaphor, by the way, makes sense and it works well as a model for the treatment of addiction and mental health issues like depression and anxiety, but this is not the model that is propagated (in a propaganda-type of way) by Big Pharma and the Drug Rehabilitation Industry. It’s a model that I discovered by working directly with herbal cures for addiction in individuals (both adults and young children) who are addicted to drugs like street meth, Adderall, caffeine, sugar, gambling, sex addiction, and more. According to conventional medicines and the vast majority of information available online, natural dopamine itself is the problem that causes addiction. A lot of the web sites online claim that too much dopamine causes addiction, but this isn’t true. Imbalanced dopamine levels cause the death of dopamine neurons which then makes people susceptible to addiction. I have personally never had any success working with the conventional model of addiction. Indeed, cure rates for addiction go up exponentially at rehab centers that give patients amino acid supplements because natural, balanced dopamine cures addiction.
But even if you don’t view yourself as an addict of any kind, dopamine can still help you make better decisions in your life. It can help you be more productive at work and it can help your mind work with traumatic events from your past that are still suspended in space as meaningless, random tragedies. Having adequate levels of dopamine helps us find meaning in negative experiences and it also helps us avoid repeating negative experiences from the past. Dopamine also helps us note positive experiences for the purposes of seeking out more of the same. You can see how dopamine works as a decision-making neurotransmitter and how at the core of addiction is the problem of repetitive, poor decision-making.
Some might find it thought-provoking to consider the relationship between dopamine and testosterone and how men and women tend to differ in terms of their decision-making strategies. While men tend to be extremely linear in their view of reality, women tend to be more “big picture”. And perhaps some of these differences in decision-making strategies might come from the tight relationship between testosterone and dopamine in the areas of the brain such as the amygdala where we work with emotions.
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The Amygdala and Amygdalin
Much of our dopamine-related decision-making takes place in the amygdala, the almond-shaped structure that we talked about earlier that’s located in the very middle of the brain just underneath the hypothalamus. As an almond-shaped structure, the amygdala could be regarded, via the concept of synchronicity in nature, as a structure that is related to almonds and other almond-shaped things (in simplistic terms, as other examples of synchronicity, walnuts are shaped like a brain and have special benefits for the brain, carrots, when sliced, resemble an eye and contain high levels of vitamin A for eye health, and avocados, which resemble the uterus, are especially good for female reproductive health).This thought about the amygdala might seem trite at the moment, but let me unpack it and demonstrate what I’m talking about.
A substance known as amygdalin is found in a number of plant-based, almond-shaped things such as almonds, apricot kernels (which are found inside the pit), and the kernels that are found inside the pits of plums, peaches, nectarines, and other stone-fruit. Flaxseeds and watermelon seeds are almond-shaped and they contain amygdalin. Grape seeds are like a tetrahedral-sort of almond shape and they also contain amygdalin. The list goes on and on. So it stands to reason that the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the brain, might also need and use amygdalin from plants.
As an aside, amygdalin is probably the most important substance that is currently known that can be used to cure or prevent cancer. Its cancer-curing properties were discovered by Dr. Sugiura, the same doctor at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center who also developed chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer. His work with amygdalin and the 100% cancer cure rate that he obtained while using amygdalin on animal models of the disease was covered up by Sloan Kettering and Big Pharma in conjunction with the U.S. government, and a huge body of propaganda was pushed out into the world to direct patients away from this substance in order to protect The Cancer Industry.
But let’s not focus on politics right now. Let’s go back to amygdalin as a substance, the amygdala as a brain structure, sexual behavior and experience, and dopamine because there are some important insights that can help you get started toward the goal of restoring balance to your reproductive system.
Amygdalin is a natural substance that is found in certain plants in high quantities. These plants include:
- Plants in the Rosaceae family (especially the Prunus genus)
- Plants in the Poaceae family (grasses like wheat)
- Plants in the Fabaceae family (legumes such as fava beans, soy, Mucuna pruriens, Pueraria mirifica, and more)
- Apple Seeds
- Watermelon Seeds
- Grape seeds
- Flaxseed
- Manioc
When I look at the list above, something sticks out to me as conspicuous and noteworthy: the fact that the plants that we tend to eat the most as a part of a normal diet in the U.S. (wheat and soy specifically) have been genetically modified. Big Pharma, Big Food, and the American government have worked tirelessly to slowly, and systematically, remove amygdalin (which is also known as vitamin B17) from the food supply. We are taught, for example, that apple seeds are toxic. They are not toxic (a close family member of mine regularly ate the pits and seeds of apples throughout his whole childhood). Apple seeds contain amygdalin, a vitamin that you need in order to prevent cancer, to produce reproductive hormones normally and naturally, to make good decisions, to defend your body from infection, and to ascribe meaning to traumatic experiences, and to find hope even when things seem bleak. Grapes have been hybridized and genetically altered to grow without seeds and we’ve been taught to prefer those “seedless” grapes as though they are better than the ones that contain those bitter, amygdalin-containing seeds. Grapes, after all, are a popular food. And, as it turns out, years ago when grapes still contained seeds, it was possible to fast on grapes and do the Brandt Grape Cure as a powerful cure for cancer.
The Budwig Diet is well-known as a cure for cancer too. The Budwig Smoothie, which sits at the core of the Budwig Diet, consists primarily of cold-pressed flaxseed oil, which contains a higher-than average amount of amygdalin among other things, which explains at least partly why this smoothie is able to cure cancer as well as a long list of other supposedly incurable diseases.
As a cure for cancer, amygdalin is probably the most important. But what about the role of amygdalin in reproductive health? This is a difficult question because scientific research into this substance has been suppressed, underfunded and just plain unfunded, and/or hidden. But there are some interesting facts that I can share with you, dear reader, and you can decide for yourself what you think about amygdalin when I’m finished.
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Interesting Facts about Amygdalin
Inside the plants in the list above, amygdalin is stored separately from enzymes that can activate it. When the amygdalin-containing plant is threatened by infection, the plant mixes the amygdalin with these enzymes to release a form of cyanide that kills the infecting pathogen. The small amount of cyanide does not harm the plant just as a small amount of cyanide does not harm humans.Amygdalin functions as a natural form of defense against infection in plants. It also functions as a natural form of defense against infection in humans as well. Humans who are deficient in vitamin B17 / amygdalin are susceptible to infection with pathogens that would otherwise not be able to penetrate the immune system. They fall prey to parasitic diseases, so-called autoimmune diseases, Candida, and cancer (which is actually an infection with a very tiny pathogen that resembles the mycobacteria that causes tuberculosis, leprosy, and scleroderma).
But interestingly, amygdalin is derived from the amino acid L-phenylalanine. If you scroll back up to the early part of our discussion about dopamine, you can note that dopamine is also derived from L-phenylalanine, an amino acid. This amino acid is transformed into a variety of different things including L-tyrosine which can then also be transformed into a variety of other substances depending on the body’s needs. L-dopa is derived from L-tyrosine. L-dopa is then transformed into dopamine if the neural watering can is low and as long as certain enzymes, vitamins and minerals are present. You can’t really overdose on L-dopa, L-tyrosine, or L-phenylalanine because these substances are widely used to produce other neurotransmitters like noradrenaline and adrenaline as well as substances that pertain to melanin, the pigment that colors the skin, hair, and eyes. Read more about how melanin affects men's health here.
You can overdose on substances like meth or caffeine or Adderall that cause the dopamine neuron which is analogous to the watering can in our metaphor, to release huge quantities of dopamine into the synapse where all of the dopamine receptor-flowers are growing. A substance or food like Mucuna pruriens that contains a natural amino acid like L-dopa is not harmful to the body the way that methamphetamine, refined sugars, or other addictive substances are harmful. L-dopa (the natural L-dopa, not the pharmaceutical by the same name) won’t hurt the body. It is a bean with chemical properties that are very similar to fava beans. It’s the flood-like release of dopamine that’s harmful to our brains and bodies.
The L-dopa precursors, L-tyrosine and L-phenylalanine are also harmless even in high quantities (except in people who genetically can’t process L-phenylalanine due to phenylketonuria). But while we’re talking about these amino acids again, we should note that L-tyrosine was once marketed to the public as a fake tanning agent because of its impact on skin pigmentation. So let’s just note for now, the fact that L-tyrosine interacts with the sun, so that we don’t forget about this amino acid pathway that leads to dopamine and testosterone. We talk about testicular tanning and men's health in greater depth at this link.
Amygdalin and dopamine are related and the more you know about both of these substances, the more you’ll be able to understand their connection in terms of both food and human health. The two are so intertwined that it’s hard to talk about amygdalin without also talking about dopamine. One of the most obvious patterns that jumped out at me and Lydian as we were researching our books about reproductive hormones, fertility, sex, etc., was the fact that plants that are members of the Fabaceae plant family tend to be good for sexual health. Some of them should only be used by women (Pueraria mirifica, Clitoria ternatea, soy) while others can be used by both men and women (Mucuna pruriens, Trifolium pratense). Scroll up to that list of plants that contain amygdalin and note that members of the Fabaceae family are among them.
The Clitoria ternatea flower is a woman's health herb that also looks like a vagina and clitoris.This is another example of synchronicity in nature similar to the synchronicity we talked about earlier in regard to amygdalin, almond-shaped things, and our argument concerning the idea that the human amygdala probably requires and uses quite a lot of amygdalin to be healthy and to function properly.
Now I want to remind you that scientists who have worked with Mucuna pruriens as a cure for addiction and mental illness have specifically noted the importance of B vitamins, particularly vitamin B6, but also methyl folate, vitamin B12, and niacin as supporting nutrients that must be present in order for Mucuna to work its magic. Trace minerals are also vital, as are zinc, copper, and magnesium. Also note that Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura classified amygdalin as a B-vitamin (vitamin B17), suggesting its crucial position as a part of the B-complex nutrients, which all work together harmoniously. Therefore, if a person were deficient in vitamin B17, it’s possible that other aspects of their health related to the B-complex vitamins would also suffer, since without this B vitamin, the other B vitamins would be severely compromised in their ability to perform their respective roles.
Read more about how to cure any type of addiction here.
The B complex vitamins are all water-soluble, which means that they are not stored in fat tissues and they do dissolve in water. All of them play a vital role in cellular metabolism as well as in the production of red blood cells. Often, several of the B complex vitamins coexist together in fruits or vegetables as well as other foods. Some of these B vitamins are necessary for the digestion and metabolism of fat-soluble vitamins which means that B-vitamin deficiency could cause also your body to become less able to digest and then absorb the other essential nutrients like vitamins A, D, E, and K1 and K2. If we add vitamin B17 into the B-complex vitamin group, and then assume that vitamin B17 plays an important role in the body’s ability to do the following, it might be more obvious how a serious, systematically induced B17 vitamin deficiency might negatively affect sexual health as well as general health in the following ways:
- Defense against pathogens through the release of tiny amounts of cyanide and Reactive Oxygen Species medicines.
- Digestion and then absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.
- Production of healthy red blood cells.
- Production of cells with normal metabolic functions
Read more about government-sponsored nutrient deficiencies here.
But there’s more. The B-complex vitamin deficiencies are strongly correlated in the scientific literature and through anecdotal evidence to mental health in a very general way. When I hear the word “dementia”, I automatically think “vitamin B12 deficiency” as the first possible root cause. When I hear the word “schizophrenia”, I automatically think “vitamin B3 deficiency” and so on and so forth. I was in Malaysia when I stumbled across a book that was, as I recall, written by a nurse who was trying to get the word out about how doctors had been instructed by insurance companies to stop giving routine vitamin B12 shots to patients. I had been doing research into Lewy Body Disease for an uncle who had recently been diagnosed with this type of dementia. At the time, I was a hard-core vegan and as I read the book, I realized that I was vitamin B12 deficient. Indeed, it had become a serious problem in that my intestines were doing some very strange acrobatics all the time and I was mentally just wasted for no apparent reason. I hadn’t eaten meat or animal products for over 5 years and even as I worked at my desk in Kuala Lumpur researching cures for my uncle’s disease, my own health was declining in a rapid, spiraling fashion.
My husband, John, and Lydian had also been vegans for 5 years. Lydian’s mental health as a teenager was less than perfect and I suddenly understood why. After I had this revelation, she and I went out together into the hot, humid concrete reality of Kuala Lumpur to find vitamin B12 supplements. Lydian had decided by that time that she found Asians to be somewhat attractive and I remember our conversation to that effect upon leaving the family-run pharmacy where a couple of young Japanese men were behind the counters. Little did I know that she would meet her future husband in Myanmar within days of that pharmacy outing and we would need that vitamin B12 to think our way through the various events that followed (and that her husband would thrive on fairly large amounts of animal protein, thus requiring a more open-minded approach to the plant-meat diet balance in regard to optimal health).
I tell this story because John, Lydian, and I went to Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand a few days later to get two vitamin B12 injections, and we were very glad to be in a place with access to these injections. Also, Bumrungrad Hospital is an important medical tourism site for people seeking affordable 5-star healthcare. From Bangkok, we traveled to Myanmar / Burma where we got another shot at the Global Healthcare Clinic in Bagan.
Everything seemed fine in terms of our health. Mentally, all of us were doing a lot better. Physically, we felt a lot more energetic as well. We were only in Burma for 4 days. Lydian had decided that she was going to marry this man she had just met when we traveled onward (without him) to Chiang Mai, Thailand. There, we all came down with malaria.
Malaria is a disease that can live for years in the body. The malaria protozoa lives in the red blood cells. And I assume that when we received those 3 vitamin B12 injections, started eating meat and animal products again (excluding commercial dairy products), and started taking oral doses of vitamin B12, that our red blood cells suddenly became healthier and more robust. There were likely too few red blood cells for malaria to thrive in our bodies prior to that time though it was still definitely living in there quietly. And then, as we nourished ourselves with a nutrient that was deficient in our bodies, we actually got very sick at first.
We used chlorine dioxide solution to cure the malaria within 24 hours (chlorine dioxide works very well to kill malaria and a wide range of other pathogens) and then Lydian gathered herself and her things and decided to fly back to Myanmar to be with this man, her future husband. (He had wanted to follow her to Thailand but he wasn’t able to leave the country since he didn’t have a passport yet.)
Vitamin B12 Deficiency
Vitamin B12 deficiency can cause dementia and in fact, many people today who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia actually are or were vitamin B12 deficient initially. A vitamin B12 deficiency that is allowed to persist for a long time can eventually turn into a permanent state of dementia, which is why it's crucial for doctors to just give a vitamin B12 injection regularly, ideally as a preventive tool in patients over 50 years of age, or as the front-line treatment for dementia symptoms. Time is of the essence in terms of vitamin B12 deficiency (as with any nutrient deficiency).A vitamin B12 shot can get people with vitamin B12 deficiency dementia to literally snap out of their demented state within hours or days. It's like a miracle. Diagnosing vitamin B12 deficiency is tricky though because of the problem of laboratory results that I mentioned above. If our family had waited for us to be diagnosed with a vitamin B12 deficiency, our bodies would have suffered under the weight of dealing with that deficiency. The vitamin B12 deficiency would have damaged our nervous systems. Some of the symptoms of the deficiency might have become permanent.
So I went to the doctor and told her exactly what I wanted. I didn’t ask for a test to verify what my own intuition and logic had already told me. And I felt very blessed to be traveling into a third world country where I knew I’d be able to get hands-on medical care without a lot of questioning from the doctors there. I’m sure that seems counterintuitive for people who haven’t traveled to third world countries, but the truth is, conventional medicine is like a religious group that has sent missionaries to evangelize the entire world. It’s nearly impossible to get away from conventional medicine. But in third world countries, doctors are less likely to recommend a battery of tests because the tests simply aren’t available or are too costly for small, local hospitals. So, because they don’t have access to these so-called “improved” medical technologies, the local doctors still use their intuition and they still listen to their patients' intuition also, knowing that the patient has the information that the doctors need to make the appropriate decision.
In the U.S., it has become extremely difficult for patients to gain access to vitamin B12 injections in average clinic or hospital settings. In people who are over 50 years of age, or in people with severe digestive problems, absorption of vitamin B12 may be less than optimal. That’s why doctors used to give patients with these health problems vitamin B12 injections at every medical visit, since this way, they could be certain that the patient was getting enough vitamin B12. This was the standard protocol even just 15 years ago. But today, it’s hard to get a vitamin B12 shot even in an emergency from a doctor. Thankfully, people who suspect vitamin B12 deficiency can either go to a walk-in boutique IV nutritional therapy clinic for a Myer’s Cocktail that contains vitamin B12 or they can administer vitamin B12 through the skin using dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) at home if they suspect vitamin B12 deficiency.
Years ago, I worked with a client who had conflicting lab reports that were based on the same tissue samples. He had vitamin B12 levels that were reportedly different in the two reports. In one lab report from a Big Pharma lab, his vitamin B12 levels were fine. In another, private lab report, his B12 levels were low. Dementia, I suppose, is a booming industry that allows Big Pharma to empty the bank accounts of older people in a legal way before family members can inherit the fortune. In younger people, vitamin B12 hurts the reproductive organs and digestion as well as mental productivity and clarity. And without vitamin B12, Lugol's iodine therapy is less effective as a cure-all for most male sexual dysfunction and disease.
Read more here about Lugol's iodine and other nutrient deficiencies that can cure male reproductive organ diseases and dysfunctions.
The AlivenHealthy Iodine Bible - Everything you need to know to get started taking iodine and more!
Vitamin B12 and methyl folate, another B-complex vitamin, work together closely. They support each other and having one without the other yields poor results. Both a vitamin B12 deficiency as well as a folate deficiency can cause miscarriage or neural tube defects in babies, for example. This is another very clear and indisputable example of how the B-complex vitamins impact the nervous system. Vitamin B12 contains cobalt (the vitamin is formally known as cyanocobalamin or methylcobalamin), which is one of three trace minerals that are essential for liver health. Methylcobalamin is the natural form of vitamin B12. Note that one of the primary locations where red blood cells are manufactured – in the liver – is also one of the primary locations where pathogens “hide” from prescription antibiotics in the body. The liver, as it turns out, is also one of the focal locations for the production and conversion of sex hormones (and other hormones, too).
