Reply To: Steroids
People are far too quick to buy into the newspapers and 24 hour rolling news view of anabolic steroids. That’s ABUSE of a medication for a non-medical situation. Anabolic steroids can have a range of superb therapeutic uses. If you go onto Google Scholar or even better Athens if you’re lucky enough to access through a university library and type in Anabolic Steroids and CIDP or polyneuropathy you will see quite a few papers on the topic. These were never double-blind experiments, but open papers regarding the use of anabolic steroids in patients with severe muscle wastage (just as they are used in HIV sufferers), but a couple of papers also showed therapeutic benefits especially regarding Nandralone Decanoate.
It has been found that androgens are extremely important in the healing of the myelin sheath. Since male patients using IViG have been shown to lose up to, or over, half of their natural testosterone production where is that natural androgen coming from to help heal the myelin sheath. if you are over 40 years of age your testosterone levels are again dropping naturally, so this in conjunction with IViG’s impact on natural endrogenic production, I again ask where is the androgen required to help reverse the demylination process.
Most of these anabolic compounds have been around for many many years and their actions on the body are well studied. Can the same be said for IViG the “Off label” medication that is used with varying success in patients, and doctors, not to a single one can give you a definitive theory on why it works? We just accept that it does, we accept the side effects if we get any (I got asceptic meningitis every time i took IViG regardless of what prophylactics were taken before my treatment) and after eight years IViG no longer works for me. My choices are prednisone with its own huge list of damaging side effects or nothing. I choose nothing. I deal with the pain, I don’t get any better, but I’m not going to get weight gain, cushingoid appearance, hyperglycemia, peptic ulcer disease, insomnia, infection, cataracts, and osteoporosis from not taking daily prednisone. There has also not been one large, long term double blind study done on the multi-year use of IViG on the body. Not one. Sure there have been small studies, but again these were open papers, so are seen with little regard within the medical community. Now I’m not saying anabolic steroids are the answer but shouldn’t we be examining as many different different approaches as possible rather than continuing to use the same four or five treatments that have existed for easily the last 30 years. Sure there is the hope of stem cell treatment if you can afford it, your HBO covers it, and you are in that small catchment window of the chronically, chronically ill, but for us sufferers that get about in our wheel chairs, are only bedridden 50% of the week we will be far, far, far down the list. My neurologist admitted that all his multiple sclerosis sufferers would get it first before GBS/CIDP as their need is greater. After spending three months in bed there recently I’m not even sure what qualifies for the greater need.
Anyway that felt good to get of my chest. Do not accept the supposed ‘norms’ thrust upon us by the newpapers and media. If there is a medicine out there that can help you or me then we should be on them, hoping that each new medicine could be the one. if you are an older gentleman get your testosterone levels checked out. if they’re too low then accept the HRT you are given and hope it helps you condition in other ways.