November 1, 2014 PDI Newsletter
Greetings to all PDI and DCI Warriors,
Welcome to this November 2014 PD Institute newsletter. I trust all my friends are doing well as we take a chilly plunge into a beautiful Fall season.
For those new to the monthly PD Institute Newsletter who only have Dupuytren’s contracture, please keep readying. All, or almost all, of the ideas and information expressed about Peyronie’s disease treatment is directly or indirectly applicable to treating DC; the two problems are treated essentially the same from an Alternative Medicine standpoint. With just a little effort you can read between the lines about Peyronie’s treatment information to see how you can easily apply most concepts to Dupuytren’s treatment; the same is true of Dupuytren’s treatment information when we feature that in a monthly newsletter to see how you can easily apply it to Peyronie’s treatment. I just cannot find time to put out a second monthly newsletter, and since these two problems are so similar and are treated in an almost exact way, I combine the PDI and DCI mailing lists each month so that everyone will be able to read and apply this information to his/her particular problem.
Two topics this month: First, good news about how Natural Health Education LLC has lowered the cost of coenzyme Q10, a therapy product that is so important in treating PD and DC. Second, a short email from a man with PD and my response to him explaining the physical changes that take place early in Peyronie’s treatment.
Make sure to click both of these buttons next time you are shopping for PDI or DCI supplements to find the different ways to save money. These buttons are on the left hand side of most pages when you enter as a “Returning Customer.”
You can also click these buttons now to see what is available.
Coenzyme Q10
If you have done much reading about Peyronie’s treatment you know that the many MDs are now prescribing coenzyme Q10 for their patients. And for good reason. This change started just a few years ago because medical urologist and Peyronie’s author/expert Lawrence Levin MD began to recommend it due to the impressive research results reported by Safarinejad. Safarinejad wrote an important research paper in 2010, “Safety and Efficacy of Coenzyme Q10 Supplementation in Early Chronic Peyronie’s Disease: a Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Randomized Study.” In this study of coenzyme Q10 as a non-surgical and non-drug treatment option for PD, 184 participants were randomly assigned to take coenzyme Q10, 300 mg, daily or a similar dosage of a placebo for 24 weeks. In addition to evaluation of plaque size, these men were subjected to ongoing evaluation every four weeks as well as at the conclusion of this study if the effects of treatment were having a positive impact on their erection quality. After 24 weeks scar size and erection quality improved significantly for the group of men receiving coenzyme Q10. No additional studies of coenzyme Q10 are known to be currently underway to confirm or deny the conclusions of this study.
Coenzyme Q10 is a naturally occurring vitamin-like substance and anti-oxidant stored throughout the body in all cell membranes. PDI uses the more biologically available form of coenzyme Q10 known as Ubiquinol as the preferred type to use in all PDI and DCI treatment plans. Because Ubiquinol is a more active form of coenzyme Q10 it is the preferred way to take it. Ubiquinol costs a few cents more per capsule than straight coenzyme Q10, but you are getting a therapy product that is at least four to five times better absorbed and active in the tissue than simple coenzyme10.
With so many people now taking coenzyme Q10 for their PD and DC, this will reduce the cost for the same high quality Ubiquinol QH product that is so popular in the medical community as well as with PDI and DCI customers.
If you go to PDI information or DCI information you can get more helpful information about coenzyme Q10 and place an order for it.
Early physical changes in successful Peyronie’s treatment.
The other day I received a very short and to-the-point email from someone with Peyronie’s disease that will be the subject of discussion in this month’s newsletter. The question that was posed in this email was about a curved shaft, but it just as easily could have been from someone who has Dupuytren’s contracture, asking why his affected finger is straighter one day than other days.
Basically, I find that as people begin to respond to their DCI and PDI treatment plans will sometimes notice that their distortions will become variable from day to day; the curve of the shaft no longer looks the same, or the flexed finger is not the same all the time. However, an even better question might be why is the affected body part not improved all the time, but why does it change back or not hold the progress that it has made; they want to keep every bit of progress in the early stages of recovery even though that does not seem to be the way the body works.
Even in cases of DC or PD that have been constant and worsening for 5-10 years before using Alternative Medicine treatment, people become discouraged and want to quit when their first real progress comes and goes for a while – until it eventually becomes permanent after sufficient changes have occurred. So for this reason I know this is a serious question that needs to be addressed for many in our newsletter audience. Here is what SAXXXXX wanted to know:
—–Original Message—–
From: saxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:22 PM
To: Theodore Herazy
Subject: curvature changes
Dear Doc,
Sometimes the curve is sharp and other days its not…why?
SAXXXXXXXX
Right to the point, that’s all SAXXXXXXX wanted to know.
For those of you who are early into the self-treatment of Peyronie’s disease or Dupuytren’s contracture and have not yet noticed visible changes in your body distortion, this question is referring to the phenomenon in which the distorted body part (bent penile shaft or flexed finger with cord formation) demonstrates a variable and fluctuating improvement that can go on for many weeks or even a few months, until it eventually levels off and becomes permanently straighter and more normal.
Here is how I replied to him:
Greetings,
If you think for a while about you have asked, you will see that your question is not fair to either of us.
You have asked a specific question about a situation of which I have no direct knowledge. On top of that, by the way you pose your question it seems you expect me to be able to give you a clear, accurate and honest answer. With no background information or knowledge of how you are treating your problem, the best I can do is to only speculate for you.
In a nutshell: I would guess that your curved shaft is changing because your scar is finally beginning to change in a positive way. Further, I speculate that you are not far enough into your course of therapy, or because your therapy plan has not been fine-tuned to be as aggressive as it needs to be for the good changes that are starting to happen to become permanent. If you are like the many hundreds of other people I have worked with over the years, after you refine and expand your plan further causing your fibrous tissue to continue to reduce down in size and density, your distortion will not change back and forth between showing progress one day only to show slight regression the next. I like to think of this situation as what happens when you try to start an automobile engine on a cold morning. When the engine is cold, even though everything is working properly, it will still sputter and stop occasionally until it is warmed up a bit; it might run for a second or two and then die out. After a few attempts to get the motor running it will finally be able to run smoothly.
The size and location of internal fibrous tissue mass determines the distortion you see on the exterior; change the scar, and you change the distortion that plagues you. Now is the time to really pay attention to how you are following and not following your daily therapy activities, as with diet, clothing you wear and how you sit. Also, it is even more important that you now fine-tune the internal oral supplements and other parts of your external therapy plan like DMSO applications, ultrasound, manual stretching, Genesen treatment to be sure you are doing everything correctly. The idea is to give your tissue all the vitamins, minerals, enzymes and outside assistance you can to favorably influence (reduce) the scar, and therefore the curve.
I have a hunch you are one of those people who is only judging his treatment progress by the appearance of his shaft. If so, you ignore me when I entreat that ideally you must pay close attention to the size, shape, density and surface features of your individual internal scars to determine if your treatment plan is working.
“Hands on” evaluation of the internal fibrous material offers the most accurate and reliable information about your tissue response to the treatment you are following, even if locating the internal scar is not always easy. Once you are very familiar with the physical condition of the fibrous material, and have developed some creative ways to determine the exact size, shape, density and surface features of each internal scar you are in a great position to confidently and accurately know exactly when your problem begins to respond to your therapy.
The importance of knowing when your problem begins to improve is this: At the time your problem starts to respond to your therapy you should stop increasing your treatment dosages. If you know that your scar is the same size, shape, density and has the same surface features you should be slowly and gradually increasing some element of your plan every 7-10 days because your treatment plan is yet insufficient to support the tissue changes you are looking to stimulate. The small and subtle physical changes you will feel in the scar will happen much, much earlier and much more predictably than any changes you can see in the appearance of your curvature.
To get a straighter and better working shaft you must change the scar that is causing the bend and abnormal function to occur, so pay attention to the scar not the shaft.
In fact, from my experience for the last 13 years while dealing with people who use Alternative Medicine PD treatment, the very first changes that are most common in a successful treatment plan are:
1. Changes in the density (how it feels when you gently squeeze it) of the fibrous tissue and
2. Changes in the surface features (how slippery and smooth is the surface of the scar when you run your finger tip across it).
Any changes in the size and shape of the scar usually – but not always – happen after sufficient density and surface changes occur. Any changes in the appearance of the distorted body part come later, sometimes a lot later, after there have been considerable structural changes to the internal fibrous tissue. This means that you will feel the internal fibrous material becoming softer or less dense, and you will feel the outer layer of the internal fibrous material becoming smoother (almost slick and slippery), before the shaft begins to straighten or become less distorted.
My other guess is that you never noticed any changes in your scar because you never looked for them, and for this reason you probably took a lot more vitamins, enzymes and did other therapies than you might not have needed to use. You got lucky. Your tissue responded even though you were blindly throwing a lot of different things at your problem, without the benefit of actually knowing what was going on down there. Most people who ignore the internal changes just get discouraged and quit because they are looking for the shaft to get straighter – which happens sometimes months later than the scar changes.
You appear to be at a good point now if you have begun to notice that the shaft is showing temporary and variable signs of becoming less curved. If you play your cards right you should see those changes soon becoming more permanent and stable as the scar becomes softer and smaller. Be careful not to change too much of your treatment plan at this time; don’t make any major changes; perhaps just slight increases of those therapies you have not changed much in the past. When you find the right dosages to use you should see the variable distortion changes quickly become permanent; your shaft will remain straighter without reverting back again to being distorted. The idea is to slowly fine-tune your efforts so that you can get more and more of the positive changes you notice. Keep me posted about your progress.
Regards,
Theodore Herazy, DC, LAc
Peyronie’s Disease Institute
Dupuytren’s Contracture Institute
I hope this little discussion helps you folks understand how to go about treatment a little better. See you next month. Stay in touch and send your treatment questions to me so I can give you some ideas to work with. Contact me at info@peyronies-disease-help.com
TRH
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