Wednesday, October 24, 2007 HardBlood (Part 2) By Zosimo T. Literatus, R.M.T. Breakthroughs
A wiser choice of treatment mode can both benefit both the heart and the liver.
Last week, we found out that it can be done with therapeutic phlebotomy.
A study early this year, led by Yoshio Sumida, found that phlebotomy was more effective than low iron intake in preventing iron deposit in the liver.
Sumida headed a team of five scientists from the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Nara City Hospital in Nara, Japan, near Osaka.
Forty patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) were given low-iron diet for six months in one group, and continuous bi-weekly phlebotomy until serum ferritin reached 20 mg/ml or less in another group. Ferritin is a protein that binds iron in the blood.
Liver damage was measured through the level alanine transaminase (ALT) in the blood. (This was formerly called glutamate pyruvate transaminase or GPT.)
The test we commonly recognized by its older name “serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase” (SGPT). Once the liver cell is damaged by high iron deposits, ALT, an enzyme found inside the cells, will reach the bloodstream.
In the report published in Internal Medicine, the Sumida team observed a reduction in ALT levels in the blood by 47.1 percent compared to the 24.2 percent drop among patients in low dietary iron.
Phlebotomy as a procedure provides more value to your money than what you initially believed you paid for. Even a small a volume of blood, like 10 milliliters obtained from your forearm vein, can help reduce extra iron deposits in your liver and lower your risk for angina pectoris.
This is one reason also why it is beneficial to donate blood once or twice every year. You are helping patients in need of blood as well as yourself. The key is its role in properly maintaining a good blood circulation. So forget about that slight prickly pain in your arm and simply close your eyes or turn your head away when you donate blood..
Famous writer Jonathan Swift has this to say about blood circulation and, of course, money. In the poem “The Run upon the Bankers” from the book Poems, he wrote: Money, the life-blood of the nation/ Corrupts and stagnates in the veins/ Unless a proper circulation/ Its motion and its heat maintains.
Blood and money somehow have something in common. (0927-872-3821 or e-mail to zim_breakthroughs@yahoo.com)
