Keeping TNF-Alpha Levels Lowered...

Bear with me for a second...

Remicade has put me in remission. Remicade is a TNF-alpha inhibitor, which essentially means it's stopping the TNF-alpha from signaling to my body that inflammation needs to occur. It seems people with Ulcerative Colitis have excess TNF-alpha, which creates inflammation when it doesn't need to actually occur.

So, if we were to get the TNF-alpha levels lowered, then symptoms would be less likely to occur, or less severe if they did. Right?

What are other options that lower TNF-alpha besides risky drugs?

Vitamin B-6
http://www.healthiertalk.com/new-hope-ra-patients-taking-multiple-drugs-2284

I don't have time to research more tonight, but am I right to go along these lines of thinking?

***I have to stop Remicade in order to get rid of a mono-infection that will not go away. I need to do everything in my power to keep UC at bay when I do this. Any thoughts at all in regard to TNF-alpha levels, and how to keep them low? I looked at a few things, and it seemed like different herbs/supplements are known to help. Has anyone focused solely on this route and found significant results?

I'm also considering LDN to help balance my immune system overall, while keeping TNF-alpha at bay.

Circumin/turmeric is well documented for lowering tnf-alpha, as are a number of other natural anti-inflammatories. And while natural doesnt necessarily mean harmless, the fact is that they tend to come packaged with far less unintended consequences. Not to alarm anyone (really, IBD is a **** sandwich when it comes to options) but we all know that TV ads for biologics have to mention, in their blather along with the happy music and models strolling through rolling hill valleys and blue skies, of the "can cause serious infections, some of which can result in death." (whenever I see those ads, I yell at the TV "evildoers!" lol)

look up wellbutrin. I posted on it a long time ago. Looks to down-regulate TNF. The generic name escapes me at the moment. something with a budes??? I don't remember, but a lot less side effects than the biologics. A number of people have commented on it in the Crohns forum as well.

Cat's Claw. I take it every night.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10962207

"a remarkably potent inhibitor of TNFalpha production."

i wonder what dosage of these herbs/supplements you'd have to take to equal remicade/humira. i've tried most of them with no success at all, but remicade gave me a quick remission.

 

bananagirl said...
i wonder what dosage of these herbs/supplements you'd have to take to equal remicade/humira.

I'm reminded of a Nicolas Cage (Coppola) quote from a movie "My first thought would be...a lot."

But seriously, I have wondered that myself and it would be interesting if, say the list killcolitis just posted could be quantified at daily dosages and compared to one of the tnf-alpha blockers. Like the study I cited, they called Cat's Claw a 'potent' tnf-alpha inhibitor. But, relative to what? I'd imagine they'd have to call Remi, compared to that language they used for cat's claw a super duper gargantuan supreme mega blocker of tnf-alpha.

I take almost all in that list killcolitis mentioned in addition to 6mp and pentasa and vsl and Rowasa.

My thinking is I'd rather do a lot of things that help a little than one biologic if possible.

 

I still view biologics a bit like nuclear weapons- a lot of collateral damage is possible. On both biolgics and Imuran, I kept getting nasty bursitis- one even required surgery- and a regular dose had little to no impact on my UC. Never ever got/get bursitis off those meds. And of course joint pains are frequently mentioned, often at intolerable levels. I look forward to much more subtle and targetted biologics that are in the (distant!) pipeline. And clearly some here do great on this first generation of very crude, WMD biologics. But the stats for biologics are still less than 50% for getting into a pred free remission- not that spectacular for all the side effects that some, like me, get.

Post Edited (Probiotic) : 1/3/2013 8:13:50 AM (GMT-7)

KC i haven't experienced anything negative with it. The supposed benefits are hugh, even in addition to bowel related disorders, especially for the heart.

The only bad thing about it that I have found is that due to destruction of forest in South America it is getting very hard to find and may not be available much longer.