Dear Kevin,
You said: <<As a child I was sensitive to what I recall being labelled 'type 1' penicillin, but into adulthood that disappeared. Recently spoke with a friend who said that within five minutes of taking penicillin, he would need medical attention urgently. He also has a genetic defect (can't recall what) that results in a very inefficient metabolism - five or more huge meals a day just to get through, and yet stays slim. Is there any reliable test you know of to determine one's CYP450 enzyme levels, and is there perhaps some means of boosting it if deficient?>> Currently, testing exists for three or four CYP450 enzymes. The enzymes that can be boosted are digestive enzymes. P450 enzymes can be given a temporary boost by "inducing" them, that is, using a substance known to be inductive of a particular P450 enzyme (there are about 100 known P450 enzymes with over 1000 genetic variations...it is suspected that there are over 1000 P450 types of enzymes), but others exist (or not) at the levels they do because of genetic differences. However, when you induce an enzyme, you are triggering a sort of crisis response in the body that results in a significant amount of oxidative damage. So, it's not a good idea to be inducing enzymes. Enzymes are also damaged or destroyed by pharmaceutical drugs, and most apt to be destroyed by those drugs taken on a regular basis. The so-called "psychiatric drugs", including antidepressants, are famous for this. The destruction or damage of an enzyme gets recorded in your genes. Your children can then inherit this. Most "adverse reactions" to drugs (not side effects) are as a result of lacking the appropriate P450 enzyme(s) to metabolize a drug. The first P450 enzyme to be recognized was 30 years ago. It is called 2D6. Since then, little was done inthis arena until 1995. It is still the domain of researchers; many physicians have heard of them, but really don't understand anything about them. The bottom line is that our current knowledge of the P450 system let's us know that prescribing any drug metabolized by this system is like throwing darts in the dark. It is sheer luck if a drug is chosen that a person can metabolize. This is one of the reasons medicine is not looking at this more closely. The FDA has just begun "encouraging" (their word) pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide available P450 info when submitting new drugs for approval, but they are not making it mandatory. It has been estimated by several researchers that 20-50% of all iatragenic illnesses/deaths from drugs would be eliminated by testing for the P450 enzymes we are currently able to test for. This percentage would rise as we acquired the ability to test for other relevant P450 enzymes. LOL, I'll bet this was more than you wanted to know! Regards, Catherine -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. Instructions for unsubscribing may be found at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
