MRI Scan Contrast Agent Causes NSF

Greetings folks. The following is an important update circulating to CAM therapists. It is important that you all know about it as it may affect you or someone you know. This is a reprint of the original article found on infoholix.net. Please take the time to read through it and make contact if this affects you or someone you know.

MRI is safe, the contrast agent only kills.

Gadodiamide based contrast agents used in MRI have been found to release the highly toxic metal Gadolinium and cause a new disease termed Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis, NSF.
Since at least 1993 millions, possibly hundreds of millions, have been affected. It seems to be health-politically incorrect to disseminate information about NSF to health professionals and patients alike. MRI is the “(w)holy cow” of allopathy, “you shall not taint its image”.

Physicians are not aware of NSF and hence fail to diagnose. Symptoms of early stage or less severe stage can easily be mis-diagnosed.

There is no cure and nobody in allopathy seems to be interested in finding one as it would require to expose that the contrast agent in MRI is the cause. This has political and legal consequences as well, a situation to be avoided at all costs, so it seems.

When a physician states “it is unethical and risky to use this contrast agent” and consequently refuses to use it he will face a libel case. This sends a clear message to all physicians: “do not stop using our contrast agent and do not make negative statements or we will sue you”.

As evidence for this remark I refer to “GE Healthcare vs Henrik Thomsen”,
The High Court of Justice
Queen’s Bench Division
Claim No. HO 08X01610

This is an ongoing case and I’ll be glad to send you court documents as attachments.

My primary concern are the NSF patients, those who have been diagnosed with NSF which are a few hundreds only, and those who suffer from it and have no idea that they have NSF and why they have it which may be millions.

You, the therapist, are in a position to identify these NSF patients in your area. You can ask the patient with appropriate symptoms if he/she has had an MRI, then investigate to find out what contrast agent was used. This is a worldwide issue and I am asking all of you for your support

Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis, NSF, is a newly emerging disease caused by contrast agents (gadodiamide) used in magnetic resonance imaging, MRI.

NSF was first identified in 1997 by Dr Thomas Grobner in Austria and published in The Lancet in September 2000 (Cowper et al). It was termed Nephrogenic Fibrosing Dermopathy, NFD, at the time and renamed in 2005 to Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis, NSF.

The cause or causes were unknown. The cause was discovered in 2006 by Dr Henrik Thomsen, University Clinic Herlev, Copenhagen, Denmark. The contrast agent, a gadodiamide, released the toxic metal Gadolinium during MRI.

The only contrast agent used at Herlev was Omniscan made by GE Healthcare. There are other brands of gadodiamides, Dotarem, Magnevist, etc … if these also release gadolinium is not known.

NSF symptoms:

Patients with NSF describe swelling and tightening of the skin, usually limited to the extremities, but sometimes involving the trunk. The condition may develop over a period of days or several weeks. The swelling inhibits the movement of joints, their flexion and extension, resulting in contractures.

Severely affected patients may be unable to walk and fully extend the joints of their arms, hands, legs and feet. Complaints of muscle weakness are common. The skin changes may start as reddened or darkened patches, papules or plaques. In time the skin may feel “woody” and the surface may resemble the texture of the peel of an orange.

Patients may experience burning, itching or sharp pain in areas of involvement.
Radiography may reveal calcifications of the soft tissue.
Deep bone pain has been described in the hips and rips.
The skin lesions are commonly symmetrical with zones between the ankles and thighs most commonly involved, followed by involvement between the wrists and upper arms.

Hand and foot swelling with blister like lesions has also been reported. Some patients have reported yellow papules or plaques around or near the eyes.

Rapid, new onset of fluctuating hypertension of unknown cause prior to the onset of skin lesions.

Is there a cure for NSF?

There is no consistently successful treatment for NSF. Improving renal function (due to any modality) seems to slow or arrest NSF, and in some cases allows for gradual reversal of the process over time.

As NSF is a rare, relative recent diagnosis, the natural history of the disease is not well understood. Complete spontaneous healing in a patient with ongoing kidney disease has not been reported yet. Several patients with NSF have died as a result of complications with their kidney disease or surgery.

How widespread is NSF?

Omniscan is in use since 1993, some fifty million MRIs using Omniscan were performed since and this number is growing daily. The procedure relies on kidney function and lymph function to flush the contrast agent out.

In February 07 the European Union banned Omniscan for use in patients with “reduced renal function”. while the FDA issued a warning about all gadodiamides and recommended “use only if necessary” some weeks earlier.

Many GPs do not know about NSF. When they encounter the above symptoms they will hardly question the patient about MRI and what contrast agent was used. Hence most cases will go undetected and symptoms attributed to other conditions. There could be thousands of NSF cases out there, it could be millions. There are no official incident rates.

What can be done?

What I said about GPs also accounts for CAM therapists. While it may be difficult to get the message to GPs I am hopeful the word can be spread among CAM therapists.

It requires concerted actions to identify NSF patients – and develop a cure.

26. January 2010

Wilfrid Hartnagel
ceo, infoholix.net

Have a great day.

Craig Hitchens.

B.HSC. NESCP. Dip. Massage. Dip. Reflexology. IICT Member

Chicken Pox

Stress, Adaptation and Fatigue

Stress and fatigue are amongst the most common complaints experienced by Australians, often leading to consultation with health care professionals. This is hardly surprising since financial pressure, work and family illness are considered key sources of stress¹. Individuals working more than 40 hours per week are more likely to suffer from stress¹. Published research in the UK indicates that 5-20% of individuals consider themselves to suffer from fatigue at a troublesome level, with women affected twice as often as men².

Stress can contribute to the production or exacerbation of disease or it can be associated with the development of behaviours such as smoking, overeating and drug abuse, which can increase the risk of disease³. It is important to note that stress can also be a consequence of disease. Although lifestyle is a major determinant of an individual’s stress levels⁴, there are many factors that need to be considered in the assessment and treatment of these patients.

It is worth re-visiting the physiological basis of stress, as understanding the mechanisms of stress may enable the practitioner to better tailor a treatment plan to the individual patient.

In some cases fatigue is a symptom of underlying disease such as a sleeping disorder or chronic infection². However, it is also essential to address idiopathic fatigue, as it can have a major impact on day-to-day functioning and quality of life².

Central to both concepts of stress and fatigue is the desire to achieve or attain certain outcomes and the perception that one is unable to achieve them⁵.

Stress

Stress (or the stress response) is the term that is used to describe physiological or psychological reactions to certain stimuli referred to as stressors⁵. A stressor can be almost anything from an infection or the cold, to fear or a perceived lack of time⁵. A psychological stressor can result in an individual feeling overwhelmed by events and having an inability to adapt or cope with these events.

Stressors tend to produce different responses in different people or in the same person at different times indicating an adaptive capacity of an individual. Not only may a stressor arise from within or outside of the body, the person’s adaptive capacity may also depend on internal factors (e.g. genetic predisposition, age or sex) or external factors (e.g. life experience, dietary factors or level of social support)³.

As a general rule of thumb, more intense stressors and chronic stressors have a greater impact on an individual than less intense or more acute stress episodes⁵.

General Adaptation Syndrome

The autonomic nervous system is divided functionally and physiologically into two divisions:

• The parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) controls involuntary bodily functions such as digestion, breathing and heart rate during periods of rest – this promotes repair, maintenance and restoration of the body. The PSNS dominates the relaxation response.
• The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) was important in the basic survival response of our primitive ancestors. It confers an adaptive advantage during a stressful situation in which epinephrine (adrenalin) is released to help the body escape from danger. This hormone can also make one feel stress, anxiety and nervousness. The stress response is dominated by the SNS and generally falls into the pattern first proposed by Hans Selye called the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)³.

The GAS is considered to have three stages: 

• Commonly known as the fight-or-flight response, the alarm stage is a short-lived phase in which the pituitary gland is stimulated to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)⁴. This stimulates the release of stress related hormones such as epinephrine (adrenalin) and cortisol³. At this stage of the stress response, no body organ or system is predominantly active. Bodily functions stimulated in this phase include blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, and respiratory rate³.
• The resistance stage or adaptation enables the individual to respond to and maintain stability in changing external and internal environments, both physiologically and psychologically. The most economic defence channels are chosen to allow the body to continue fighting a stressor long after the effects of the fight-or-flight response have worn off³.
• The stage of exhaustion may manifest as total collapse of body function or as collapse of specific organs. The ability of the body to defend itself is depleted and signs of ‘wear and tear’ or systemic damage may appear³.

Adaptation implies that the individual has created a new balance between the stressor and the ability to deal with it. Coping mechanisms used to attain this apparent balance include³:

• Previous experience and learning
• Physiologic reserve – refers to the ability of body systems to increase their function given the need to adapt
• Time – adaptation is more efficient when changes occur gradually
• Age – the capacity to adapt is reduced as a person ages
• Health status – determines physiologic and psychological reserves, a strong determinant in the ability to adapt
• Nutrition – deficiencies in essential nutrients can alter a person’s health status, impairing the ability to adapt
• Normal sleeping patterns – are important for adaptation to stress
• Psychological factors – for example, those with an ability to perceive stressors as a challenge rather than a threat and having a strong social network tend to have more evolved adaptive capabilities.

Some coping mechanisms can be classified as negative coping patterns and include drug, alcohol and smoking addictions, overeating, excessive television watching, overspending, excessive behaviour or emotional outbursts⁴.

Fatigue

Fatigue is the perception (regardless of reality) that one is not able to keep pace, physically or mentally, with the demands with which one is faced, or that one is not able to adequately recover each day from the mental or physical activity performed⁵.

Careful questioning by the practitioner is needed in order to determine the individual nuances implied by a patient’s use of the terms ‘fatigue’, ‘tiredness’, ‘exhaustion’ or other similar words. Importantly, fatigue should be distinguished from sleepiness, which may be symptomatic of a sleep disorder, and from a lack of motivation, which may be indicative of depression².

All cases of fatigue should be fully investigated to exclude undiagnosed underlying causes such as anaemia, thyroid disease, depression and other psychiatric disorders. However, a medical explanation for the fatigue is found in only a small percentage of patients².

Research indicates that fatigue is the major complaint in 5-10% of patients visiting primary care physicians, and an important secondary symptom in a further 5-10% of patients². It is likely that lifestyle factors such as poor diet play a role in at least some of these cases. However, it can generally be said that the more severe the fatigue, and the larger the number of associated unexplained somatic symptoms (such as headache, muscle aches and pains), the greater the impact on the patient’s quality of life, and the more likely the condition may be medically diagnosed as depression².

Causative factors for fatigue can be divided into three subsets, which may be of assistance in formulating a treatment plan².

• Predisposing factors: include being female and a history of either fatigue or depression
• Precipitating factors (or triggers): include acute physical stressors such as viral infection or any other acute disease, psychological stressors such as bereavement, and social stressors such as work-related stress
• Perpetuating factors (factors that impede recovery): include low levels of physical activity, emotional disorders, ongoing psychological or social stressors, and sleep disorders.

Stress and Sleep

One of the consequences of chronic stress is poor sleep⁵. Sleep plays an important role in allowing the body to repair and regenerate energy³. This may sound obvious; however the statistics relating to insomnia and sleep disturbances are surprising.

Epidemiological surveys indicate that 9-15% of the adult population complain of chronic insomnia, while an additional 15-20% report occasional sleep difficulties⁶. Insomnia affects many individuals, giving rise to emotional distress, daytime fatigue, and reduced performance⁷.

The effects of sleep deprivation have been compared to alcohol intoxication, and researchers have found that after 17-19 hours without sleep (starting from waking at about 6.00 am) an individual’s performance was equivalent to or worse than that with a 0.05% blood alcohol concentration⁷.

Insomnia appears to be more common among women and older adults, and there is frequently a family history of sleeping difficulties. The mother has been found to be the most frequently afflicted family member with both past and current insomnia. This suggests that a positive family history might increase the vulnerability to insomnia, although it is unclear whether this reflects a genetic predisposition or a social learning phenomenon⁶.

Alterations in the sleep-wake cycle have been shown to affect several body systems including immune function, hormone secretion and physical and psychological functioning³. For example, night work and lost sleep may contribute to the development of peptic ulcers. It has been suggested that disruptions to circadian rhythms could mean that people with irregular schedules could miss out on vital periods of gastrointestinal healing. A protein known as TFF2 increases specifically during inactivity and sleep (from 4am to 8am) to facilitate repair of the gastric mucosa at night. Earlier studies have also shown strong diurnal patterns for presentations of peptic ulcer perforation with a trough in presentations between 4am and 8am⁸.

Source: www.blackmores.com.au

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