Had a bit of a tough day, yesterday. I woke up with a fever of 38 ° Centigrade (100.4 Fahrenheit, oh I do love those online converters!) and felt icky enough to call the doctor. He put me on antibiotics immediately. By 2 p.m. my fever had gone up to 39.3 ° C (102.7 ° F), and I had a familiar pain in my left lung. In May 2006 that kind of sharp pain was my first main symptom of pleurisy (a painful inflammation of the linings around the lungs, called pleura). But back then I didn’t know what the pain meant, so the condition went untreated for days (that’s the problem of getting ill on a Friday!). By the time my doctor came to see me, I was gasping painfully for air. I was ill for two and a half months, and completely bedridden for at least the first month. I refused to go to the hospital, and my parents and Stefano agreed. So they took care of me, a heroic feat indeed. I will always be grateful to them for that. Well, this time I recognized the pain, and am confident that I caught it in time. Gone, however, is my feeling of pride in my valiant little immune system! 😉 Drat.

I am feeling much better today, still a slight fever and a slight pain in the pleural region, but clearly the two types of antibiotics are working. Ah, and my sense of humour has returned. Stefano and I were joking around this morning. However, I won’t be answering e-mails any time soon.

Take care, everyone, and watch out for high fevers and stabbing steady pains in your lung area. Ok, back to bed! 🙂

Once again, I am postponing my segue to the CRP post. Too complicated for my fuzzy brain right now, even though I am feeling better today, and my sore throat is almost gone. But tomorrow I have classes, so I must concentrate on being perky for my students. 😀 One thing struck me when I reread yesterday’s post, though: I didn’t mean to slam specialists. We need specialists, of course. My point was another, and I hope that was clear…

Since I was (and am) not at the top of my mental abilities today, I ignored my increasing pile of medical and scientific studies, and instead read other lighter items such as an article titled “Add Color to Your Diet,” published today in the Tyler Morning Telegraph (East Texas). It’s worth reading, since it explains in simple language what flavonoids €”quercetin, epicathechin (found in chocolate!), delphinidin, capsaicin, curcumin etc. €”are. Instead of posting a summary, here is the link for those interested in flavonoids: http://tinyurl.com/2d3br6

At the end of the article there is a link to a U.S. Department of Agriculture’s database listing 26 selected but important flavonoids in 393 foods. How about that? I was very excited. Until I saw some of the items on the list, that is, then I was sort of amused. Here is the link, have fun! http://tinyurl.com/yvwdrm You will even find chocolate on this list, as follows: “candies, dark chocolate, purchased in the Netherlands.” Dark chocolate candies purchased in…the NETHERLANDS? But the first item that really tickled my funny bone was the ready-to-serve marinara pasta sauce. (No brand name mentioned, so I guess there is only ONE brand that makes this kind of sauce…). The sauce actually turned out to have a tiny percentage (less than 1%) of quercetin. Better than a zero, I suppose.

Another couple of items were canned sauerkraut and commercial condensed canned tomato soup. C’mon, you’ve got to be kidding. Who would go look for flavonoids inside a can??? A Popeye the Sailor Man aficionado? Okay, to be fair I checked the canned foods almost one by one, and it turns out that canned capers do have a high content of kaempferol and quercetin. But the rest of the canned items either turned up a big bunch of zeros or negligible quantities per edible portion. Edible (oh dear, I feel another tickle…)? Oh, I get it, I guess you are not supposed to eat the can part of canned foods like “sweetened canned cranberry sauce” (another item on this list). Just eat the cranberries and put the can in the recycling bin… 😉

Yesterday I felt a bit under the weather; my main symptom was a nasty sore and swollen throat which made it difficult for me to talk or swallow. But today I feel much better, and am up and about. And talking. 😉 I am very proud of my weakened (very low IgAs and IgMs) but valiant immune system. Since Monday evening, when I began feeling a bit ill, I have taken only a couple of aspirins (hey, salicylates!). Of course, I continue to take my curcumin etc. Yesterday I was feeling so poorly that I thought oh great, here we go again, another cycle of antibiotics. But today I think I will be just fine (well, starting tomorrow)! Goes to show that a compromised immune system can still function. Sometimes.

I don’t feel like posting the segue to my CRP post today, though. Instead, I will post about a topic that I have been pondering while reading a fascinating book by Tiziano Terzani, a well-known Italian journalist/writer. The book is about his experience with cancer and life etc. By the way, it took me the longest time to find what type of cancer he had (he died in 2004). Most websites, both Italian and English, just mentioned the generic word cancer. But I finally found it on the International Herald Tribune website: stomach cancer. At any rate, this wonderful book is titled Un altro giro di giostra (or One More Ride on the Merry-go-round ), and one of the themes he discusses is the inadequacy of modern science and medicine, and the fact that we (patients) are sometimes (often? always?) seen by our specialists not as a whole, but merely as a collection of our filled-out medical forms and charts and tests and x-rays. He writes that machines and tests and diagnoses are essential, of course. But if we are seen only as parts of our whole selves, the risk is blindness.

He offers a brilliant example: an ancient Indian story about a group of five blind men who were asked to describe an elephant. There are many versions of this story online, but this is Terzani’s: the first blind man grasps the elephant by its legs and says that an elephant is like a temple, and these are its columns. The second man strokes his trunk and declares that the elephant is like a serpent. The third man feels the elephant’s stomach and reports that the animal is like a mountain. The fourth touches an ear, and the elephant turns out to be similar to a fan. The last blind man grabs the elephant’s tail and announces that the elephant is like a whip. Terzani states that every definition contains some truth, but the elephant is not described by any of these men as it really is. He compares his excellent doctors at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to those five blind men, because if a physicist, a chemist, a biologist and a zoologist were asked to provide a scientific description of an elephant, they would end up giving four totally different portrayals. This illustrates the problem of scientific knowledge: it is precise, it is exact, it is ready and willing to substitute current theories with new ones or vice versa, Terzani writes, but it is also permanently limited in its comprehension of reality. I have a story of my own: a neighbour’s daughter has something wrong with her. She is 17 years old. Her mother has taken her to almost every specialist in Florence, she has had a million tests of all sorts, but not one of these excellent doctors has been able to come up with a diagnosis, even less a course of treatment. Nobody can figure out what is wrong with her, and something clearly is wrong. So she undergoes more tests. This has gone on for months. Could it be that we have too many specialists in our modern Western world? Therein may lie the limits of science.

Terzani tells another story (I love his stories!) showing that if we look at reality only through the lens of science we risk acting like the drunk in a popular Asian story. On his way home after a jolly evening spent drinking with some friends, a drunk realizes that he has lost the key to his house. As he is searching the ground under a street lamp, a passerby asks him what he is doing. The drunk slurs, “I’m looking for the key to my house.” The passerby asks, “Are you sure you lost it here?” “No,” replies the drunk. The passerby asks Then why are you looking for it here? “Because it’s the only place where I can see anything.” Scientists, Terzani continues, behave in the same way. The world that they describe to us through their instruments is not THE world but a partial view of it.

Terzani also describes the frustrations that must be felt by modern scientists, again with a story: one day a scientist friend of his pointed to his head, saying: I know how every single type of cell works up here, but I don’t know how the brain works. Beautifully put. So, how to solve this problem? Well, I certainly don’t have the answer. But perhaps we would be better off if doctors were taught to have more of a holistic approach to medicine. I am lucky in the sense that I have two brilliant doctors: my GP who, in addition to having a specialization in general medicine AND surgery AND psychology, is also a skilled homeopath (the man is a genius), and my haematologist, who is very open-minded etc., as I have written on previous occasions. They both listen to me. I mean, REALLY listen. The first thing they ask when we sit down is: how are you doing? Not: let’s have a look at your tests. Not everybody has my good fortune, though. I belong to three myeloma listservs and have read plenty of ghastly doctor stories.

I concur with Terzani. I think, generally speaking, that doctors tend to identify their patients with their illnesses and not see them as people (excluding my own case). They look at the part, not the whole. This is a HUGE topic, but I must say that my interest in holistic Ayurveda seems to deepen day by day, especially as I read through this book.

Final thought: perhaps one day our specialists will no longer be called multiple myeloma specialists but multiple myeloma PATIENT specialists. 😉

Last week a multiple myeloma listserv member posted a ScienceDaily article that initially puzzled me. The article (http://tinyurl.com/2k3acf) begins: Scientists report that a protein best known as a common marker of inflammation plays a key role in the progression of human cancer. The research, published by Cell Press in the September issue of the journal Cancer Cell, implicates C-reactive protein (CRP) as a potential target for cancer treatment. Well, that didn’t seem like breaking news to me. One of my regular blood tests measures my serum levels of CRP, and I know that it’s a myeloma marker. But then I read the showstopper: These results provide strong evidence that CRP is not just a marker for MM but is a critical regulator of myeloma cell survival.

Not good.

Reading on, this protein protects myeloma cells from the effects of chemotherapy and also enhances their production of IL-6 (an evil cytokine that protects myeloma cells from dying). So CRP and IL-6 work together to keep myeloma cells alive, in a sort of vicious circle. Also not good.

As I was reading this article and then the study abstract (http://tinyurl.com/2xop56), a question popped into my mind: are there any natural ways to decrease our CRP levels? The answer is YES. However, since this is a complex topic, both to understand and to investigate, and since my research has led me a bit astray (all over the place, actually!) given the overwhelming amount of information, I chose to post some of what I found out by degrees.

Let’s start with the C-Reactive Protein. What is it? In essence, it’s a protein produced by the liver and released into the bloodstream when there is an ongoing inflammatory process in the body. It is a non-specific marker for inflammation: an elevated CRP level indicates inflammation but won’t tell us where exactly it is located. So we might have high CRP levels due to a simple cold, arthritis or some type of infection. The above-mentioned abstract reports that Elevated levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) are present in many disease situations including malignancies and may contribute to the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders. I didn’t know that an elevated CRP is a indicator also of cardiovascular problems, hypertension and other types of cancer (prostate, hepatocellular, e.g.) until I did research for this blog piece. Indeed, one interesting item that I came across is that people at risk of developing heart trouble or a stroke may, strangely enough, have normal LDL cholesterol levels but a high CRP. Quite an important recent discovery! Anyway, I double-checked my own CRP levels, which have never been above 9 mg/L (that is the normal range). The problem with this test, at least in Italy, is that it doesn’t quantify CRP. It simply reports that I have less than 9 mg of this protein in my blood. I prefer to have precise figures, so this test does not satisfy me at all. Besides, I noticed that in 2005 I had.5 mg, so at one point it WAS an actual number. Puzzling.

So we go back to the question of how to reduce CRP levels by natural means. I will give one example before stopping for the day (I have to get ready for my classes tomorrow). I found a couple of recent studies showing that one way to reduce CRP levels may be to increase our daily fiber intake. See: http://tinyurl.com/23hd2p and http://tinyurl.com/3xldst. That’s it for today!

Today I have no inspiration. I tried and tried to do some research, but that went nowhere, and my post just isn’t happening. I played with the kitten (but this photo actually shows Priscilla, two years old, lying in the bathroom sink) and went back to my search results and what I have written so far. No change. So I give up. It’s almost time for dinner, anyway, so I will forget about my draft until tomorrow morning.

Just for fun, today, I googled Margaret’s Corner, and found more than 1600 entries. Many of them refer to my blog, but many refer also to other blogs by other Margarets. This made me think that I really should rename my blog some day. A blog title should indicate the content of a blog, but my current title indicates very little about my blog, just my first name. “Margaret’s Corner” could be the name of a cafè or of a corner store, really. Hardly my case! 🙂

We are having a family dinner tonight. My aunt, cousins, their partners and my cousin’s little boy (an adorable four-year-old who speaks both English and Italian) will be here in about fifteen minutes, and we have been cooking up a storm almost all afternoon. We haven’t seen them since Xmas, it’s one of those things, we all have busy lives etc., so it’s a celebration when we manage to get together all in one place. They actually don’t live too far from here, only about a half hour outside of Florence, in a beautifully-restored former mill built in the Middle Ages. When you think of the Tuscan countryside and have a vision of hills and cypresses and green valleys and bubbling streams, well, that’s the area where my aunt and cousins live. Yep, it’s beautiful out there. I will have to go visit them and take some photos for my blog, even though it’s prettier there in the springtime. Anyway, as a result of this dinner, I have done almost no research today. Tomorrow!

New Generation Curcumin. A myeloma list member brought a new product to my attention, and even though I don’t like to publicize brands, I am curious to know if any of my readers takes it. It is the new Life Extension Foundation Super Bio-Curcumin, and more info can be had here: http://tinyurl.com/2aarkp Here is an excerpt from the LEF web page: The 100% natural curcuminoids complex in Super Bio-Curcumin ® is a patent-pending synergistic blend of curcuminoids and sesquiterpenoids with enhanced bioavailability and sustained retention time in the body confirmed by human clinical studies. Super Bio-Curcumin ® is a ‘next generation’ in delivery of curcumin compounds that no longer requires high doses of curcumin to reach sustainable levels of curcumin in the blood plasma. Each 400 mg capsule of Super Bio-Curcumin ® is equivalent to 2772 mg of a typical 95% curcumin extract. I take 15 capsules of curcumin a day. The new LEF product would cut down that number considerably (where is my calculator when I need it? 😉 ). Wowie zowie. Of course, I now have in my possession enough regular curcumin to last me for one entire year. Typical! Anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning. And I hope this product is the first in a series!

I am on a hot trail today, but there is no way I will be posting anything about my latest discovery until at least tomorrow or, possibly, day after tomorrow. No time to finish the research now.

Doing research is a bit like playing Scrabble. You look at your tiles (letters) and come up with a word, but then you find that the combinations left by other players on the board lead to other possibilities, better possibilities. So you think of other words. And all the time you are trying to find a really good seven letter word, like myeloma” 😉 , in order to get that 50 point bonus. I drive my sister and niece nuts when I play Scrabble with them, because I invent the most ludicrous-sounding words and insist that they look them up in the Scrabble dictionary. And, more often than not, those words exist. 🙂 I happen to like comical-sounding names. If you look on the right-hand side of my homepage, you will see that a lot of my research has had to do with words such as baicalein (Scutellaria baicalensis), guggulsterone and gossypin.

Well, in a way, research is like one huge Scrabble game, with one item leading to another (at times) more interesting item. And then another, and so on, almost ad infinitum. The stakes are higher here, much higher, of course, much more than a mere 50 point bonus. But now, after spending the morning on this new (for me) topic, I must devote the afternoon to preparing my classes for tomorrow. I will leave the Scrabble game to Piccolo (isn’t he adorable?), and have a look at my board again tomorrow when I get home from work.

This is the title of a Science Daily article (http://tinyurl.com/38gz4d) posted by a MM listserv member yesterday. In a nutshell, it appears that Emory University researchers have discovered a new target in the treatment of multiple myeloma called Ribosomal S6 kinase 2 (RSK2). A quick look through the article took me to a key sentence: The researchers observed that elimination of RSK2 proteins or shutting down RSK2 activity blocks FGFR3 transformation signaling in myeloma cells. This means FGFR3 requires RSK2 to transform normal cells. So, eliminate or inhibit the activity of this protein, and normal cells don’t turn malignant. Is that significant or WHAT? (FGFR3 simply means “fibroblast growth factor receptor 3,” in case you were wondering). Of course, I immediately did a search to see if there were any studies on curcumin and RSK2, but got side-tracked when I found that aspirin and salicylic acid inhibit this protein (see: http://tinyurl.com/2mzvg5). I started with RSK2, then one thing led to another until I came to an unexpected conclusion. It was like reading a good mystery novel with a Deaver-like twist in the end. But first things first.

According to a Yahoo health page (http://tinyurl.com/2qk2ko), salicylates are a naturally occurring group of chemicals found in a wide range of foods, herbs and spices. [ ] The average ‘Western diet’ has an estimated Salicylate intake ranging from 10 to 200 mg per day. In comparison, the average dose of aspirin contains 650 mg of Salicylic acid. Naturally-occurring AND chemically similar to aspirin? Yahoo (no pun intended, hehe)! Oh, and by the way, salicylic acid is obtained from the active ingredient of the bark of the willow tree (or Salix, in Latin), which was used for centuries in traditional medicine to relieve fever and pain. Here follows a partial list of foods that have a high salicylate content. FRUIT: apricot, avocado, blackberry, black currant, blueberry, cherry, cranberry, date, grape, grapefruit, kiwi, mandarin, mulberry, nectarine, orange, peach, pineapple, plum, prune, dried raisins, raspberry, red currant, strawberry, watermelon etc. VEGETABLES: alfalfa sprouts, capsicum, champignon mushrooms, chicory, cucumber, eggplant, endive, hot pepper, olive, radish, tomato, zucchini, watercress etc. NUTS: almonds, cashews, etc. SWEETS: golden syrup, honey, liquorice, peppermint etc. HERBS AND SPICES: allspice, aniseed, bay leaf, black pepper, caraway, cardamom, cayenne, cinnamon, clove, cumin, curry, dill, five spice, garam masala, ginger, mace, mint, mixed herbs, mustard, nutmeg, oregano, paprika, pimiento, rosemary, sage, tarragon, thyme, turmeric, white pepper, etc. BEVERAGES: alcohol (especially apple cider, beer, sherry, brandy, liqueur, port, wine and rum), coffee, tea (black, caffeinated, decaffeinated, rosehip and peppermint), fruit juice etc.

Now, did I read TURMERIC? Yes, indeed, I did. And here comes my shocker for the day. 😉 I found an article (http://tinyurl.com/yrjgs3) titled Vindaloo Indian Dish Healthier than Aspirin, in which British nutrition researchers discovered that one portion of the Vindaloo dish contains more salicylate (95 mg) than a low dose aspirin tablet (65 mg.). Just ONE portion??? Vindaloo, by the way, is a traditional Indian dish with bits of boneless pork, onions, vinegar, garlic and lots of spices. I have made many Indian dishes, but confess that I have never made this one. Well, I guess I will be learning how to make it SOON! Oh, oh, I just had a possibly brilliant thought. Why couldn’t I mix my curcumin powder with just the spice part of Vindaloo (i.e., without the pork), and eat that concoction warmed up? Now how about that? A delicious and perhaps optimal way to reap all sorts of anti-myeloma benefits.Vindaloo for thought!

Warning: some folks are allergic to salicylates, so be cautious. Until I did research for this piece, I had no idea that there was an allergy to aspirin out there. So much to learn. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that aspirin is a blood thinner. Another note of caution, thanks to Don’s comment!

My first day of teaching has always exhausted me, and this was no exception. But I think it went quite well. The hours flew by, unnoticed, and my students and I had quite a few jolly laughs, which is part of my teaching with laughter philosophy. For instance, at one point, after hearing too much Italian being spoken during my full immersion English class, I threatened that they would have to pay me one euro (about $ 1.35 U.S.) for each word they uttered in Italian. Since I had managed to keep a straight face, for a second or two I was able to enjoy their baffled expressions (they don’t know me yet!). Then we all burst into laughter as one student tried to bargain me down to five cents per word while another pulled out his wallet and handed me his credit card. Yep, I am satisfied that I have not lost my old teaching touch. Yet! 😉

While a part of me is too tired to post more than these few words or answer any e-mails, another part feels like Peekaboo in this photo, proudly carrying her prey across our dining room table. The I made it! feeling.

A blog reader (thank you!) recently posted a comment, with an attached abstract, on this topic, which for obvious reasons is of utmost importance and interest to me and to anybody else who takes curcumin. The abstract (http://tinyurl.com/2t73w5) reports that the bioavailability of curcumin is enhanced with HEAT. Key sentence: We report here that the water solubility of curcumin could be increased from 0.6 μg/ml to 7.4 μg/ml (12-fold increase) by the use of heat. A 12-fold increase in water solubility? That’s nothing to sneeze at. These researchers also found [ ] no significant heat-mediated disintegration of curcumin. Well we certainly do NOT want curcumin to disintegrate, do we? Now, I already knew that curcumin dissolves in fats (I have seen that happen with my own eyes) and I have read that it dissolves in alcohol (bring on the vodka, hic!), but heat? And then, boom!, it hit me. When I first started taking curcumin, I mixed the powder with very warm, but not boiling, coconut milk. At that time I hadn’t even heard of bioperine nor was I taking any oil capsules. I had simply read that it was best to take curcumin powder mixed with a fat. I drank this concoction for months. And by the way, after the first eight weeks my IgG count went down almost 20 %.

Consideration. As I have said before, curcumin is not water-soluble. However, recently another blog reader commented that she mixes her curcumin with heated organic whole milk. She wrote that one day she ran out of milk but managed, eventually, to dissolve her curcumin in hot water. Well, so this heating curcumin business may make sense after all. Another consideration: back in May I wrote a post on a study (http://tinyurl.com/2fh26z) that examined the degradation of curcumin when heated up. I reread it yesterday and found that curcumin was affected after being boiled in water for ten and twenty minutes. Well, no worries, then. I don’t plan to BOIL my curcumin as I do pasta, not even for a few seconds, but just heat it up enough to make it more bioavailable. And that leads to the obvious question: how much is “enough”? Ok, NOW I’m in trouble!

While looking for material on this topic, I came across an interesting Dutch website called Food Info Net, which is (and I quote): an independent joint project, initiated and run by Wageningen University (the Netherlands) in co-operation with several other partner universities in Europe. The site is non-commercial and all responsibility on content and lay-out is with the university partners. Hmmm, interesting. I will go back at some point and have a look at the various sections on food allergies etc. At any rate, Food Info has info on curcumin (http://tinyurl.com/ywf75z), as follows: Curcumin is light sensitive but stable at temperatures used in food processing. So, that is reassuring. It would appear that heating it up for a few seconds wouldn’t alter its properties. Or would it? My final question is: should we try taking curcumin mixed in, or simply accompanied by, a cup of hot milk?

I knew I should have been a Science major. Drat. Well, the search continues. And any suggestions or other studies would be welcome. My work has just begun.