Why the Shrinkage?

by William Ferril, MD

The Apparent Secret of What You Need to Regenerate (Reinflate)

Since ancient times, physicians observe and write that “old age” involves the loss of body water. However, the reason for this ancient truth is not often comprehended; if you enjoy a young body it still possesses the ability to hold onto more of a glass of water ingested because you contain more water “attractant.” In contrast, when you become old and drink fluids, because you enjoy less “attractant,” the fluid more easily escapes into the urinal!

Hence before any progress can be made towards your reversing the long-observed shriveling effect caused by your body’s drying out and consequently collapsing, your medical professionals needs to know what is missing and how to restore it. Although this process, to varying degrees, involves all of your cells, here for learning purposes, I want to limit the focus on the shrinking effect within your joints. After all, imploding joints is without a doubt one of the main causes for your loss of height!

The good news is that I now understand a biochemical explanation for what the water “attractant” is and how to recreate it within your body through a series of interventions. Unfortunately, before I comprehended the order and significance of what science long ago revealed, it required years of study. What this means to you is that suffering from joint pain and lost function often becomes unnecessary.

Make no mistake about it, other consequences and causes exist that contribute to your drying out, such as your experiencing hunching; crunching, sagging and bagging, which only partially involve this primal form of drying-out process (explained in other articles). Here, as an introduction, I want to focus on why your joints dry out, crack, and eventually implode. Do I detect a little discord now along the lines of, if it is so important, then why does my doctor not know about it?

Well, fair enough, you see, almost 14 years ago I walked away from medicine. No, I wasn’t in trouble and yes, I graduated from a mainstream medical school in 1985. Back then; I became suspicious that my formal education perhaps only taught me half-truths of why you may suffer from a disease process, like joint dysfunction. Unfortunately, it seems to consistently be the profitable half. So, I have enjoyed the advantage of over a five-year sabbatical where I scoured medical literature in search of more complete truths of how your body heals. Your joints shrinking or healing provides a pertinent example to one of the many things I learned while free from the demands of making a living. As I write this missive today, I am beginning my 9th year applying in my practice what I learned during my time away.

Let’s see if I can back up the science of what is known about joint destruction and later joint functional regeneration. The first thing that you need to understand about healing your joints is what the “water attractant” is made from. Basic scientific principle; the greater the electrical charge the more water is attracted into a given area (osmosis). Basic chemistry says that the electrical potential contained in body water opposes gravities ability to squish out precious cellular fluid. Important joint healing point: young people enjoy higher electrically charged spaces while old people do not. It is the suboptimal electrically charged body spaces that allow water to escape from an old body into the urinal. Because of this basic scientific fact re-hydrating the old body as you age remains off limits until this all-important electrical charge returns (the water attractant).

Sometimes truth is so simple that it is overlooked in the rush to convince you to use the latest symptom control approach pandered by the medical industrial complex. That how much electrical charge your joints contain powerfully determines their water content, provides such an example. It is a great example because I now know what the chemical composition of the joint tissue is that contains the electrical charge. I also know the nutrients needed for its manufacture and I am enjoying substantial clinical success by understanding the hormones that direct its regeneration. Remember, before you experience true joint healing, the consequent shriveling, drying and eventually collapsing effect need to be corrected.

Most of you have heard about the mostly accepted joint benefit derived from chondroitin and glucosamine ingestion. Well, there is some truth here but the important omission concerns the fact that the electrical charge (the water attractant) within the cartilage of the joint attaches to both glucosamine and galactosamine. Notice galactosamine is missing from most of the formulations offered for sale. Further, even though chondroitin (a wood like molecule) contains both of these building blocks it is not digestible by us humans into its component parts! So even though chondroitin seems to help by some other, as of yet determined mechanism, it is probably not helpful in recreating the all important electrical water attractant for this reason. Until someone offers me a better alternative, digested gelatin is what I prescribe to my patients.

Remember this part first so that the other steps of healing your joints can be added onto these must have basic cartilage building blocks so that the electrical charge can attach sufficiently. In turn, sufficient electrical charges returning to the cartilage again create adequate attraction for the necessary water needed to keep your joints from cracking and imploding. Realize, the major reason, if you enjoy a young body, you most likely still possess stronger joints, comes down to the fact that you contain sufficient glucosamine and galactosamine! Try and visualize with me that your joints will remain hungry for structural support without sufficient amounts of these basic building blocks arriving in reliable amounts.

But there is more to it than just enjoying sufficient glucosamine and galactosamine within your joints. This combination only provides the backbone that the “electrical charge” (the “water attractant”) attaches to. Recall sufficient electrical charges within the cartilage of joints forms a prerequisite of having the necessary water to prevent shriveling, imploding and cracking joints so prevalent as you begin the shrinking process (old age). Before I discuss the actual water attractants identity, I need to alert you to the possibility for missing scientific inquiry at your doctor’s office virtually ensuring your continued shrinkage.

Enhanced Healing through Understanding That an Important Diagnostic Test Is Often Overlooked at Your Doctor’s Office

Shrinkage processes intensify because important glands secrete the hormones necessary to initiate repair and when the repair message diminishes the injury mechanism intensifies. This last fact elucidates why although shrinkage can begin at a younger age, it most likely occurs as you age when your glands begin to tire. To correct this part of the disease process I inquire into what bio-identical hormones are waning through conducting a well run 24-urine test (hormone report card). This method not only measures these important hormones excretion rate over a 24-hour period but also their metabolites. It is the metabolites that add predictive value to the inquiry because I can better ferret out what is not happening properly in my shrinking patients’ body.

In contrast, many of my colleagues’ standard inquiry still involve either saliva or serum hormone levels. Unfortunately, this approach only measures the instant of the blood draw or the moment of spitting into a cup. I believe the variables of romance, exercise, hunger, satiated, fatigued, rested, stressed, or being happy during the instant of the collection are insufficiently pondered. You see all these different states profoundly influence the hormone levels coming out of the thyroid, adrenal and gonads (testicles or ovaries).

The instant in time inquiry (saliva or blood), although convenient, fails to incorporate the reality of these variables. Fortunately, collecting urine over a 24 hour period with an attempt to monitor; stress, happiness, exercise, romance and the other hormonally changing variables provides a better understanding of what your glands really provided you, being more accurately measured.

Making matters worse concerns the inadequate laboratory technology utilized in both the blood draw or saliva sample method, when attempting to accurately measure small molecules, like steroids. These popular approaches use anti-bodies that supposedly only cross react with the desired steroid hormone, many of them different by only one bond! Add in the question about accepted accuracy being agreed to be plus or minus 20%! However, recent mainstream scientific papers have called into question even this mediocre level of accuracy. In contrast, the 24 –hour urine hormonal inquiry technology utilizes GC mass spec technology, which delivers a greatly increased accuracy level. It is important that I disclose that I maintain no financial interest in promoting/disparaging any kind of laboratory testing.

How to Manufacture More ‘Water Attractant’ Again

Recall, before your joints can recover they need to generate a sufficient electrical charge that in turn attracts adequate water into the cartilage (joints). In basic terms the electrical charge attaches to glucosamine and galactosamine. Today, we know the electrical charge is comprised of a very simple molecule sulfate.

With the above list of nutrients in mind it becomes more logical why you need to ingest glucosamine, galactosamine and a source of sulfate so that your joints can begin the healing process. MSM provides an excellent source of sulfur from which your body can easily transform into sulfate. Visualize with me as the concentration of these important molecules increases within your joints, water sucks towards them despite the force of gravity always attempting to express precious water during your upright experience.

But it’s important to realize that your simply ingesting the right nutrients necessary for joint rebuilding is often not enough. There needs to be sufficient message within you that instructs these building block parts to combine into a complex molecular “meshwork.” Please realize that until the “meshwork” (cartilage) enjoys sufficient electrical charging again, your joints will continue drying, cracking and crumbling.

Hormones are the messengers that travel within your blood stream to places like the joints. Certain hormones direct repair projects in places like your joints. Once you realize this simple truth, it makes more sense about why you should ask your doctor to check whether you enjoy enough repair hormones or not.

Hormones That

the Joints Need

In living cells, the fundamental regeneration message depends on a few simple hormones. They are; IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor type 1), Growth hormone, anabolic steroids, thyroid hormones and vitamin A. Their involvement here can become really complicated, but an overall appreciation for why if you’re lacking anyone of these retard your joint healing efforts is warranted. It is also important for you to appreciate how this short list of hormones interrelates and as a consequence when one of them is deficient the whole recovery message falters. For example, IGF-1, because it is a protein, the gene that codes for it requires adequate anabolic steroids for its synthesis within your liver. In addition, your liver needs to encounter sufficient Growth hormone before IGF-1 releases and heads for the joints. However, thyroid hormone levels determine how much growth hormone the pituitary makes. Oh and without adequate vitamin A some thyroid message sites are not delivered to. Whew! So let’s simplify it from here on.

For example, it may sound like out of the above group of hormones IGF-1 is the most boring sounding of them all. Well, that is completely incorrect, because it is the hormone responsible for determining how much electrical charge (sulfate) attaches within your joints! Almost all physicians fail to understand this important fact, because with things as big as IGF-1 the science of our day conceals its important role by changing its name several times over the last few years. This method isolates knowledge because physicians would need to know its other names before they could begin studying it more completely.

Pertinent here, concerns its role in generating your joint tissues’ “water attractant” (sulfate) level so as to reverse some of your experiencing shriveling and drying effect so common in old age. In fact the older scientific literature describes IGF-1’s important role in recreating sufficient electrical charge (water attractant) by the alias name of sulfation factor! Visualize with me that sulfation abundance powerfully attracts water into your body’s joints because it contains a strong electrical charge. Only with the return of sufficient electrical charges within your joints will water again be adequately attracted to stay within the cartilage and out of the urinal. Another variation concerns if you also suffer from joint destroying autoimmune diseases, you need to adhere to the additional step of identifying the disease causing food and avoid it completely (explained in other articles).

The good news is that by your attending to these specifics, healing will eventually occur (reversed joint shrinkage and diminished pain) as long as it was administered before the end stage, bone on bone, point of joint destruction. For this reason, end-stage joint destruction often still requires surgical correction. I hope that this adds an incentive for you to be proactive and begin the above described protocol soon rather than later!

© 2012 by William Ferril, MD

All rights reserved.