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Successful test of cure for heart disease!!!

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Jonabark

Jonabark

Rising Star
Does the food additive cyclodextrin clean out sclerotic arteries? An honest testimony about a personal experiment with remarkable results.

It's 3:50 A.M. raining and snowing lightly with sloppy icy paths outside but clear roads. I know this about the roads because I was just outside running up and down Mill road a couple hundred yards and I am now about as excited as I have ever been. I think I just became a fairly ideal test case and evidence for what may well prove an amazing medical breakthrough. Since I was first informally diagnosed as possibly having artherosclerosis, through the later conclusive tests near the end of July 2018 until yesterday I have had fairly strong heart pain every time I jogged 20 yards, danced vigorously for more than 5 minutes or in any heart-intensive activity for more than a few minutes, often just climbing the stairs brought some pain. Fortunately it never became a heart attack.
The diagnosis hit hard even though I have tried from the first to be optimistic and to redouble my efforts to eat a healthy diet, end consumption of butter and sugar and find what natural remedies might be possible. I am a health conscious person at 67 years and at 5' 6" or so I weighed about 150 and have excellent physical coordination and flexibility before the artherosclerosis started to manifest. Before the pain started I biked regularly up a nearby mountain, and like to go free-form-rock & roll, tai -chi dancing once a week if possible. I do qigong daily and tai chi several times a week.

But right now i just came in and woke my wife up and shouted with laughter and delight because I just ran well over a hundred yards uphill and down with no heart pain. Here's what made the difference. 2 days ago, after about 5 months of diet, of regular ingestion or reishi powder, of ginger and garlic and panax ginseng and amala powder I had seen no change. But tuesday at the end of a 10 day fast with only water and hawthorn, which reduces the pain and gives more room for pain-free exercise, I broke the fast in preparation for a dinner with my visiting daughter Rebekah. And Wednesday I started to test something else I had planned to try before submitting to get a stent as many have urged me to do. ( It's nice to know that people want you around despite some areas of hornery stubbornness). I added a maybe about 3/4 of a teaspoon of cyclodextrin, a food additive, to about 5 fruit juice drinks over about 30 hours. I had done some research online about various treatments and dietary issues with artherosclerosis and came across some medical research that looked very intriguing and promising. The same basic research had been done in Germany and Sweden on mice.( Possible breakthrough in the treatment of atherosclerosis ) The researchers managed to get the mice to have clogged arteries and then fed them some amount of food grade cyclodextrin. I plan to go to Williams College today to see if I can get a full detailed version with all amounts etc. Most if not all of the Mice's arteries got unclogged. In my position I thought, huh? they aren't doing research with people using something that looks so promising and is OK'd by the FDA in food?
In my experiment to see if there is an alternative to a stent( not the worst thing, but I wanted to find another way)I decided to give my first options a try and then to try cyclodextrin a more isolated pattern of ingestion. As soon as I drank it the second time I began to feel a bit lighter but also did not wish to get my hopes up. (Yesterday, Thursday, was a phone and couch day with only some stretches and qigong to keep me going and a couple more teaspoons of cyclodextrin in apple cider and cherry juice and some flax milk.. Late in the evening I was still awake and began to do some vigorous qigong and dance moves and noticed no pain so kept getting more aggressive and still no pain and then jumping and running in place and still fine and now I was getting way excited. By this time it was close to 2 am, but I quietly took off my pjs and put on some winter jogging clothes and carefully made my way over the ice and snow to the driveway and road to go for my literal test run.
I have now done several fast runs and still no pain. I also feel a lightness in my chest that was my normal state, but feels wonderful now. I want a cardiologist to do more tests, but I feel deeply convinced that I have stumbled into something remarkable.
 
Which cyclodextrin was it? Was it HPBCD? That is what they used on the rats.

As I understand it, HPBCD is not well absorbed in the digestive tack and it was given to the mice in the study subcutaneously (are you sure the mice were fed HPBCD?)

If HPBCD did get into your system somehow then it makes sense that it could solubilize cholesterol plaques I think.

What kind of juice drinks did you ingest with rh HPBCD? Citric drinks have been shown to enhance intestinal absortion (this post has an example for mannitol).

Hope this really worked for you. HPBCD has been looked at a lot and seems safe. It is even used in eye drop formulations for improved glaucoma drug delivery.
 
LoveAll. It was the Beta Cyclodextrin which is used as a food additive and in certain drugs to aid delivery, C 45 with 7 glucose rings. I got a non GMO Kosher packet which looks like a fine starch and has only the slightest sweetness to taste. So according to Wikipedia you seem to be right that it is not easily water-soluble( mostly going into foods with oils). I used it in smoothies with flax milk, bananas and blueberries, in local apple cider and in a cherry apple flax milk blend, I also had one half teaspoon in hard cider which fizzed and either dissolved more or chemically changed.
I want to be clear here. There is no doubt that I had anterior artery blockage. I had echo cardiograms, a stress test monitored by 2 doctors and a nurse, presided over by an experienced cardiologist. Since July I had pretty severe pain at low levels of exercise( I normally bike 10 miles up a mountain once a week as often as there is no ice, so this restriction was very hard for me). I spent 5 months butter and cheese free, regularly eating reishi powder from Hokkaido, Fish oIl from Norway, lots of garlic and ginger etc. and all with very little if any change. Hawthorn 3 times a day vastly reduced the pain threshold and made it bearable and I could work enough to put a steel roof on my studio/barn as long as I moved at a moderate pace.
Because I had just finished a 10 day fast ( water and hawthorn and a few pinches of salt only) My metabolism was just getting going when I took the cyclodextrin. So I guess, based on the incredible effectiveness of the ingested c*d further research might want to look into some of these other factors. BUT WOW. I Was running like crazy again today just because It felt so good. My chest feels lighter and I can see the color red again when I do my qigong for heart exercise( I really missed that color. )
Many of you know much more about chemistry than I do so your thoughts and questions are much appreciated here.
I am coming down from the psychological high of such a wildly successful experiment and am nervous the I will simply be ignored or told condescendingly about the placebo effect . But I am still pretty determined to push forward my experience as important and warranting more research.
 
LoveAll. It was the Beta Cyclodextrin which is used as a food additive and in certain drugs to aid delivery, C 45 with 7 glucose rings. I got a non GMO Kosher packet which looks like a fine starch and has only the slightest sweetness to taste. So according to Wikipedia you seem to be right that it is not easily water-soluble( mostly going into foods with oils). I used it in smoothies with flax milk, bananas and blueberries, in local apple cider and in a cherry apple flax milk blend, I also had one half teaspoon in hard cider which fizzed and either dissolved more or chemically changed.
I want to be clear here. There is no doubt that I had anterior artery blockage. I had echo cardiograms, a stress test monitored by 2 doctors and a nurse, presided over by an experienced cardiologist. Since July I had pretty severe pain at low levels of exercise( I normally bike 10 miles up a mountain once a week as often as there is no ice, so this restriction was very hard for me). I spent 5 months butter and cheese free, regularly eating reishi powder from Hokkaido, Fish oIl from Norway, lots of garlic and ginger etc. and all with very little if any change. Hawthorn 3 times a day vastly reduced the pain threshold and made it bearable and I could work enough to put a steel roof on my studio/barn as long as I moved at a moderate pace.
Because I had just finished a 10 day fast ( water and hawthorn and a few pinches of salt only) My metabolism was just getting going when I took the cyclodextrin. So I guess, based on the incredible effectiveness of the ingested c*d further research might want to look into some of these other factors. BUT WOW. I Was running like crazy again today just because It felt so good. My chest feels lighter and I can see the color red again when I do my qigong for heart exercise( I really missed that color. )
Many of you know much more about chemistry than I do so your thoughts and questions are much appreciated here.
I am coming down from the psychological high of such a wildly successful experiment and am nervous the I will simply be ignored or told condescendingly about the placebo effect . But I am still pretty determined to push forward my experience as important and warranting more research. As I recall tonight there seemed to be some suggestion by one of the research teams with the mice that the cone-like opening in the cyclodextrin was chemically pulling in cholesterol or cholesterol crystals. I have no idea if I am even phrasing that accurately, this is not my forte. I am a craftsman artist and ok with words but chemistry is my least apt area of knowledge.
 
thanks to all for fast responses. Been busy since posting.

My question right now is whether I should stop the teaspoons. The last one was 11 this morning and it's now 11PM.
My instinct is to quit and see how long the current status holds, simply returning to a heart healthy diet and regular intensive exercise. Any thoughts?
/Users/brook7/Desktop/now what? imagining the resurrection of the feminine.jpg

How do I get an image into a post?
 
Jonabark, I would recommend you go to the doctor to get evaluated again (if not already doing this). Let them know what you took and review the before/after results.

The study you mentioned used HPBCD, while you seem to have used BCD. The difference between the two seems to be water solubility and absorbtion in the intestine. BCD seems to be less water soluble and more absorbable. In the study, rats were injected HPBCD (to get around poor intestinal absorption I presume), while in your case you ingested BCD.

Another thing you can do is email the authors of the rat study. They may have more info or may have info on using BCD instead of HPBCD. They may also be interested in what you ate with BCD since BCD itself can increase what food compounds and drugs make it into the blood.

To add a picture to your post you can click on the "ATTACH" button.

By the way, I do think it is feasible that by taking BCD orally it got into your system and helped dissolve cholesterol buildup. For exame, there is research showing BCD complexes (absorbs) cholesterol in food. If you had ingested HPBCD (which was injected the study) it may not have worked since it is poorly absorbed in the intestines.

Edit: Here is the email of one of the authors of the rat study you mentioned in the spoiler:

eicke.latz@uni-bonn.de
 
Hi jonabark,

It's great that you're now able to exercise pain free. It must be a weight off your shoulders.
Just thought I'd pass on some info, that you may or may not know.

With regard to definitively knowing if your atherosclerotic plaques have regressed, there is only one method - formal angiogram. Did you have one done at the time of diagnosis? If so, a repeat angiogram would tell you if the plaques have regressed. Having said that, you won't find a cardiologist that will perform an angiogram on you, if your symptoms have improved.

Echocardiogram gives no direct information on coronary artery blood flow.
Stress test done with echocardiogram or ecg (ekg in some countries) gives you surrogate information, or inferred information about coronary artery blood flow, not direct information. Therefore, it is difficult to say that there has been an improvement in atherosclerosis, based on a stress test. It's a stretch.

Unfortunately there are many reasons you may no longer feel pain on exertion, regardless of the state of your atherosclerosis.
I'm not a cardiologist, but I can provide you with two such examples;

1) minor collateral coronary arteries have formed to supply the area that the left anterior descending artery once supplied. Therefore, there is no longer ischaemia in that territory when you exercise

2) you're developing a neuropathy of the nerves supplying sensation to the heart. This occurs in diabetics.

I hope you're plaques have regressed due to cyclodextrin, but the chances of this occurring are small.
On the other hand, if something is working for you, personally, and there is limited evidence for it, keep doing it, I say.

I wish you many years of pain free exercise.
 
There are different cyclodextrins:

- They come in 3 sizes, small to large: alfa, beta, gamma.
- Their outher shell has different configurations that affect solubility and intestinal absorbtion. Some flavors are plain (-OH termination only), methyl (has -CH3 terminations along with the normal -OH terminations), and hydroxypropyl (has -CH2-CHOH-CH3).

In the research that Jonabark posted, they seem to inject HPBCD due to poor intestinal absorption. It sounds like Jonabark used BCD (?) orally which seems to have better (yet very small) intestinal absorbtion (makes more sense for oral use). Intezam, the item you posted is HPBCD which could be different than what Jonabark may have used.

Note that there is is patented supplement for cholesterol control. Under all the fancy marketing names (what a waste of people's time) it simply uses alpha cyclodextrin (ACD). Similar outer shell to BCD, but smaller. In the description (which has references to pulbished papers) they note that the ACD complexes with fats when taken with food so they cannot be abosorbed in the intestine. This would be different than what may have happened to Jonabark, where BCD is hypothesized to go into his blood where it can disolve cholesterol plaques.

Here is an article comparing HPBCD and BCD intestinal absorption in rats (only BCD was observed after oral administration, but in "insignificant" ammounts) The Pharmacokinetics of β-Cyclodextrin and Hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin in the Rat - Pharmaceutical Research

There is pretty strong evidence that BCD or HPBCD will dissolve cholesterol. The biggest question in my mind is can a significant amount get into the blood orally. ACD may work as well, and some can get into the blood thanks to bile according to this study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0378517388900567

I agree with leratiomyces, next step should be an assessment from the doctor to try to measure what (if any) improvements have occurred.
 
Thanks to all for these responses and the detailed chemical and medical information. I would like to address some of the thoughts presented.

Leratiomyces, Are angiograms very expensive? How could it be a responsible medical diagnosis and recommendation of catheterization if the diagnosis was so questionable? This is rather disturbing in the sense of not having clear evidence of my original condition, which I thought I had.

1)However I find your alternate explanations somewhat non persuasive. After 5 months of severe symptoms which persisted despite dietary changes and were still severe enough to cause serious pain during my fast. This pain was induced simply by climbing stairs up 8 feet to to my upstairs studio slightly faster than usual. The idea that alternate minor arteries had formed but only altered my symptoms 30 hours after taking the cyclodextrin, and altered them so dramatically as to allow me to run at full speed for over a hundred yards up and down a slope that drops a good 20 feet is more coincidence than I can accept as a likelier explanation. But at least such an explanation is testable with imaging tech.
I am not diabetic and that idea is a huge stretch. My nervous system is fine. These were not misleading sensations. Nor was the sudden change some kind of placebo effect. I was anticipating pain when I started running, severe pain. It never came.
I do think that the fast and diet could have prepared my metabolism to maximize the absorption and effectiveness of the beta cyclodextrin. and I even think it possible that my qigong practice and the dancing motions and mind body imaging I was doing more intensely before the run could have been a factor. But I am persuaded that the cyclodextrin was the critical agent.
I will certainly keep you posted and am not meaning to be argumentative and really appreciate your input. My resistance is due to a very close monitoring of the issue and serious reading about symptoms.

I do intend to get tested if it is remotely affordable, but am in the not so rare position of being on medicare but having no medigap coverage. I will not pay anyone to prove what has happened, though I will pursue follow -up tests if the 80/ provided by medicare is enough. If my circumstances are not intriguing enough to warrant further testing by those who claim to be doctors, I have not decided what I will do.

I find the bit about bile posted by Loveall very interesting so looked for connection between fasting and bile/gallbladder effects. Found this:

Effects of fasting on the composition of gallbladder bile.
H M Bloch, J R Thornton, and K W Heaton
Copyright and License information Disclaimer
This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.
Abstract

Gallbladder bile was aspirated from the duodenum in nine healthy women after three separate periods of fasting after a standardised meal. Mean cholesterol saturation index was significantly greater after a 15 hour fast (1.35 +/- 0.08) than after a 10 hour fast (1.05 +/- 0.10). However, after 20 hours of fasting, mean cholesterol saturation index had fallen to 1.13 +/- 0.10. Total biliary lipid concentration was unaffected. These findings suggest that fasting has a series of effects on gallbladder bile and that bile sampling should be carried out at at standardised period of time after the last meal.

There are other observations on this topic revealed by a search and appears to be a connection between bile effects and fasting. I had not wanted to suggest that the fasting was part of what made this experiment work because it was an instinctual act and an attempt to clear my system to make maximum use of the next experiment with cyclodextrin. But I fasted for 10 + days , 11 days if you don't count the 3 figs and some high absorption reishi powder I had for breakfast on the first day.

i did send a report on my experience to Dr. Latze of the German study. Thanks for the idea.
 
Hi jonabark,

I'll do my best to answer some of your queries.
Yes angiograms are expensive. I'm still unsure if you've had one or not. How much you pay depends on what country you live in and what level of cover you have. I'm Australian, so my knowledge on cost and access is limited to Australia.

Let me be very clear on this, it would be negligent of a cardiologist not to offer a patient with stable angina (your description of symptoms) an angiogram. An angiogram is used for both confirming the suspected diagnosis, and for treatment (deployment of stent). In this country, you can get your angiogram for free, but there will be a waiting time. If you pay you get one quick. If you need one urgently (heart attack and haemodynamically unstable) you get it for free, on the spot, if you live in a major centre.

It sounds like your doctors have done nothing irresponsible. It sounds like they have offered you an angiogram, and you have chosen not to go ahead at this stage? Perhaps I have not understood correctly.

With regard to my alternate explanations, they were not meant to be pursuasive. I was simply pointing out that there could be many other explanations to account for your disappearance of symptoms. I was unsure if you were diabetic, so you're right, neuropathy is highly unlikely, since you are not diabetic. Collateral formation, does occur, but is unlikely to explain the sudden disappearance of symptoms, as you have pointed out.

I don't have an explanation as to why your symptoms have vanished so quickly, but it is unlikely to be cyclodextrin. That's the point I was trying to make. You see, there is no therapy that exists that reverses atherosclerosis to a significant extent. All the current therapies (excluding stenting and angioplasty) focus on slowing the progression, or halting the formation of atherosclerosis. Not reversing it. Statin companies will suggest their product reverses atherosclerosis, but this is the usual overstated efficacy. The reversal size is small, if true at all.

One of the reasons you cannot reverse a plaque, is because they are a complex mixture of substances. They are not just a blob of cholesterol sitting on the arterial wall. That's a gross simplification.
Finding a method of reversing a plaques would be worth many many billions. Many companies would have spent many millions researching this. No solution as of yet.

I hope you have stumbled on the answer, but.......

Hope this verbal diarrhoea helps.
 
leratiomyces, I think you make good points and agree in general with what you say. Thanks for your input.

However, note that atherosclerosis regression in rats using cyclodextrin was claimed by the research. They also got good results on human biopsy material. I've attached one of the images from the article, along with the paper itself. The title is:

"Cyclodextrin promotes atherosclerosis regression viamacrophage reprogramming"

Perhaps a human treatment is being looked at already, I don't know. Back in 2016 this is what the authors had to say:

CD, on the other hand, is already in clinical use in humans for the delivery of lipophilic drugs and has not shown relevant toxicity. Hence, repurposing CD for the treatment or prevention of atherosclerosis would be feasible. Our studies provide a proof of principle that therapies aimed at increasing the solubility and removal of macrophage cholesterol could be an effective strategy for the treatment of atherosclerosis.
Click to expand...

So it is feasible that CDs could have helped Jonabark. The biggest difficulty in oral use is for the CD to make it into the blood. Perhaps some super-charded post-fast bile intervened. I don't know, and maybe CDs did not help Joanbark, but surely we can agree that this should be looked at further. So far, Jonabark has contacted one of the authors of the paper.
 

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No the cardiologist never mentioned an angiogram ( at least not using that word) and it was not offered or suggested when I told him that I intended to see if there were possible dietary solutions before getting a stent. If I had known this was needed for clear confirmation I would have asked. I never heard the term until you mentioned it. On the other hand, my symptoms do seem to offer little other interpretation.
Could you clarify what NM myocardial perfusion imagery is? His notes under this area say,"There is a a large size relatively severe intensity perfusion abnormality involving the anterior wall of the left ventricle extending to apex." The next sentence seems muddled to me, "This also extends tissue involved some anteroseptal region, the later and inferior wall."

Again I return to the idea that fasting may have affected the absorption into the blood. While there are, as you and the cardiologist said, no known treatments or therapies in traditional western medicine that clear arteries, there are claims of an effective ayurvedic treatment with ghee, some claims of reversal with reishi and with panax ginseng and we have these 2 studies with mice beginning in 2016. I assume the sclerotic arteries of the mice were the same complex substance.
I have written both the cardiologist and my GP trying to get further tests without having to pay 4000 dollars. I just sold a large piece and have interest in another major work but my income is pretty modest and I can't afford to pay for this.
Hey if cyclodextrin is lipophilic why couldn't you eat it mixed with oil? It is a glucose based structure and the mice got the cd into their arteries.
 
One more thing. I did put amla fruit powder in the drinks, which is loaded with vitamin c and other good stuff.
 
Hey jona,

Sorry, I probably haven't done the best job explaining things. An angiogram and stenting happen together, during the same procedure. The angiogram happens immediately before the stent is placed. The angiogram tells the cardiologist where exactly the narrowing of the artery is so they can deploy the stent at that exact location. So whilst your cardiologist has not used the word "angiogram", it's implied when they offered the stent.

A myocardial perfusion scan provides information about blood supply to the myocardium (heart tissue). And based on the results the cardiologist can make predictions about which coronary artery or arteries are blocked. The test is usually done in two parts, firstly at rest and secondly, after the heart is beating very fast (either via exercise or drug induced).

Before I interpret the sentence that you have paraphrased from the results section, do you mind telling me if that sentence came from the test done at rest, or the test done after the heart rate was sped up. The results are usually split into two separate sections, "at rest" and "on exertion" or "post injection of ......".
 
Jonabark said:
Hey if cyclodextrin is lipophilic why couldn't you eat it mixed with oil? It is a glucose based structure and the mice got the cd into their arteries.
Click to expand...

As I understand it, and I'm not an expert, cyclodextrins behave like fiber to first order in the digestive tract. They are not easy to absorbe. Also, the outer and inner shell typically have different lipo/hydro loveability.

In the mice study looking at artery blockage, they injected cycelodextrins. I'm not aware of a study where cyclodextrin was fed to study its effect on cholesterol in arteries. Jonabark, sorry if I missed it, do you have that available? Thanks.

Hopefully someone gets to evaluate you again so the pre/post results can be studied. Has anyone emailed you back?
 
Thanks lera for that clarification. The problem with the "offer" is that it was based on an insurance mix-up. Fortunately the mistake was in my favor for these preliminary tests. But I am now only covered for 80% of any medical bill through US Medicare. The medical costs here are nuts. So unless they are interested in me as possible evidence of a new therapy, I don't have much hope for follow up tests. So far neither Latz nor the cardiologist nor my GP has responded. Nevertheless I feel better every day as my body recovers from the fast and I am able to exercise at any rate I desire.
That finding, ( both quoted sentences are the Doctor's exact notes), was the stress imaging not the rest imaging.

his final note following rest and stress imaging " IMPRESSION:Large size and moderate intensity reversible perfusion abnormality involving the anterior wall, anteroapical region and anteroseptal region consistent with ischemia. "

I really appreciate your feedback here. you seem to have more interest in understanding and helping me understand the medical context than the doctors, who seem, to be honest, very constrained by standard procedures. I am fairly certain that either the cyclodextrin managed to get into my blood or something far weirder happened along the lines of a Kundalini awakening, which might also explain the fact that I am getting by for the last week on about 2 hours of sleep a night but feeling quite calm, energetic and happy.
 

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