SOME PARTING THOUGHTS.
After considerable study both by personal experience and by an in depth study of the literature some patterns do show up. The first is that an immune system when it goes out-of-control is able to cause more than one disease. Each disease may have specific symptoms which are unique. For example in 1965 I had all of the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and the sedimentation blood test was abnormal. However I also had some of the symptoms of Temporal Arteritis. These include the trouble with the eyes changing in respect to the prescription for glasses after 30 years,as well as the two TIA's or small transient strokes that I had. The cortisone administered periodically cleared up both problems. It also put the reumatoid arthritis into remission but this took a year.
The point here is the lack of understanding today in respect to the the root cause of these problems. Is it primarily the immune system out-of-control or is it the harmonal system in the body that is causing the problems by not regulating hormone levels correctly. One clue was given the other day on TV. A four year old girl who was inflicked with arthritis from birth was about to be given a bone marrow transplant. This was given much publicity as a great experiment in medicine. This approach assumes that her immune system is malfunctioning and the bone marrow transplant will hopefuuly correct this condition. The bone marrow is where the various cells used by the immune sytem start their life. The bone marrow contains stem cells which produce the first in a family of cells. Many of these cells are used by other glands to produce the unique cells used by the immune system.
However the girl had another problem. She had stunted growth indicating that her growth hormone was not at a high enough level to sustain normal growth. Wouldn't that suggest to you and the doctors that the root cause could very well be her hormonal system and the feedback control which normally keeps all the hormones at the correct level. We know that cortisone which is a steroid hormone has the ability to infuence the hormone control system because it is able to enter the nucleus of the body's cells and directly influence the DNA. However very little else is know about the normal and abnormal operation of these systems in respect to the human body because the necessary accurate measurements have never been carried out using available devices such as mass spectral analysis. I call giving the little girl a bone marrow transplant 'firing blindly'. We are not taking about measurement procedures that are prohibitively costly or difficult. Sports medicine use blood and urine analysis routinely to detect banned steroids in athletes in parts per billion. If sports medicine is able to afford such analysis surely the rest of the human population deserve equal status.