J.B. Symes, DVM. v. Epilepsy, et. al. (part 1)

J.B. Symes, DVM (aka DogTorJ), sent me a link to his website where he provides the details to his research into food intolerance and how they affect animals and humans. His examination and research on the topic is immense. I encourage anyone interested to check it out on his website.

For the purpose of the next few posts, I am going to simplify Symes' massive thesis into one brief sentence: Food intolerance and allergens damage cells and reduce the effectiveness of immune systems to deal with tissue bound viruses and cell mutations.

So how does that apply to epilepsy? Epilepsy is not a disease, but a condition where a person experiences re-occurring seizures. Seizures themselves are not a disease, but a response by the body to some stress. The re-occurring stress to the body/brain is what "causes" epilepsy.

The most common way that doctors combat seizures is simply to use drugs which inhibit the bodily response to the stress - hence the mind-numbing side effect of many of the drugs. In cases where the stressor is a tumor or brain damage, one way to stop the repeated stress on the brain is to surgically remove the offending tumor or brain area. In cases where the doctors cannot determine from where the seizure-causing stress is emanating, they call it Idiopathic Epilepsy.

Now, consider that doctors are frequently faced with having to treat Idiopathic Epilepsy with some selection of the available anti-epileptic-drugs (AEDs). If you read the white-papers on nearly all of these medications, one thing stands out: they all say that the doctors/manufactures are not clear on the details of how the medication helps stop seizures. Wow... talk about a tough job; trying to treat some unknown cause with unknown solutions!

Here is where Symes research comes in. He painstakingly pieces together historical and medical research to come up with a comprehensive theory on what the stressor is that causes a number of conditions, including idiopathic epilepsy. (It is like M. Night. Shyamalan's "Sixth Sense" when at the end of the movie is all becomes clear and you realize that the protagonist is a ghost.)

What I am going to do over the next few posts is apply theories laid out by Symes to my own medical history and see if his theories match my symptoms/seizures. To be clear, I am applying his theories - this is not a diagnosis by Symes.