July 1, 2018 PDI Newsletter
Greetings to all PDI and DCI Warriors,
Welcome to this July 2018 Peyronie’s Disease Institute newsletter.
This month we have two different topics. First, a brief report on the results of our lumbrokinase research project. Next, an email from one of our readers with treatment information that can be used for Dupuytren’s contracture and Peyronie’s disease.
Lumbrokinase research project results
A little over a year ago I began a research project to investigate the effectiveness of the enzyme lumbrokinase with 14 volunteers who had either Dupuytren’s contracture or Peyronie’s disease. Lumbrokinase is a fibrinolytic enzyme that destroys fibrin, as found in the DC palm lump and cord and the PD scar.
The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of lumbrokinase on Dupuytren’s contracture and Peyronie’s disease as determined by its ability to start or improve or increase fibrous tissue reduction when added to an already existing treatment plan. Lumbrokinase was not used as a solo or stand-alone treatment because that would be contradictory to the fundamental Alt Med treatment concept of developing treatment synergy through combined use of multiple external and internal therapies. The treatment plans of the volunteers had to be either not producing results after six months of use, or previously effective treatment results had to be stalled for at least two months. Thus, we wanted to see if adding lumbrokinase to these particular plans improved treatment effectiveness.
Over the last few years I have lately received more questions from DCI/PDI readers about this enzyme. For this reason I wanted do a preliminary and brief investigation if lumbrokinase could be used in our Alt Med treatment of Dupuytren’s contracture and Peyronie’s disease. We all went into this knowing we were merely doing an early trial of lumbrokinase effectiveness for DC and PD, and not much more than that.
As an aside, you will see that the email correspondence this month from SSXXXXX mentions lumbrokinase, so our two topics tie in together nicely.
For those who have been thinking about using lumbrokinase in your Dupuytren’s contracture and Peyronie’s disease treatment, please be forewarned: The vitamin/mineral supplement industry is unregulated to a great degree. This allows many companies to sell products that are not as advertised; sometimes even large well-known companies sell inferior and mislabeled products. Lumbrokinase in particular is an enzyme that is ideal for abuse because it is difficult to extract and expensive to provide. As a result you might not get the quality or quantity of lumbrokinase you pay for. You have to be so careful.
After 15 months the joint DCI and PDI lumbrokinase research project was cancelled for two reasons: 1. Weak evidence that the addition of lumbrokinase into an existing moderate- to large-sized DC or PD treatment plan was able to start or increase any significant reduction of target fibrous tissue; adding lumbrokinase to an existing DC or PD treatment plan did not result in clear evidence of DC or PD fibrous tissue reduction. 2. Four reports of increased bleeding time while taking lumbrokinase; four people reported small cuts taking significantly longer to stop bleeding than they would normally experience prior to their intake of lumbrokinase.
These four reports of increased clotting time are purely anecdotal and unverified since I have no way to personally or directly monitor my volunteers, as is typical of how we work with our DCI/PDI population. Given our inability to conduct pre- and post-blood tests because of our informal study methods, people only knew that their blood clotting time was increased after they accidentally were cut. If they did not get cut they would not know one way or the other if their clotting time was affected by their lumbrokinase intake. I know I can go many months without getting a cut, and probably other folks are the same. For this reason it is possible that there were more than four of the total 14 volunteers who had increased clotting time, but did not know it simply because they happened to avoid injury while participating in our research project.
Our study was just a small and early investigation into this subject. It was not scientifically conducted in a way that would lead to strong conclusions about lumbrokinase; it was too small and not conducted in a way that would have formal research merit. For this reason our little project only suggests a lack of effectiveness for lumbrokinase to reduce fibrous tissue in DC and PD, and not much more than that. But our previous research projects into L-arginine, gentle manual shaft stretching for PD, ultrasound, etc., were also conducted in a similar manner but resulted in positive results and were added to the DCI and PDI protocols.
Even so, given that I am working alone in this area this small and focused testing is the best I can do; this project consumed hundreds of hours of work over 15 months. I hope that in the future a more formal investigation will be applied to this topic.
In view of the lack of any clear favorable response after more than a year of lumbrokinase use, plus the possibility of increased bleeding time, I felt we had no choice but to shut down this 15-month investigation in lumbrokinase use for DC and PD.
Even though I would have liked to have gone on a little longer, in our limited circumstances we learned what there was to learn. Bottom line: Not enough reward and too much risk from using lumbrokinase as part of a combined Alt Med Dupuytren’s contracture and Peyronie’s disease treatment plan.
Email about Peyronie’s disease treatment that pertains also to Dupuytren’s contracture
Once again we are going to use the popular format of presenting a recent email exchange I had with someone in which I have blended my email response directly into their original email − like two emails in one.
For those of you who are new to our monthly newsletters, please simply apply the ideas expressed here about Alternative Medicine treatment and dosage to what you are doing for your DC or PD. Since Peyronie’s disease and Dupuytren’s contracture are so similar in many ways, treatment is also similar; what can be done for one problem can also be done for the other.
Read this series of combined emails like the back-and-forth of two people talking while one occasionally interrupts the other to make an important point or answer a question. To understand the flow of the conversation, keep in mind that the text in black is from SSXXXXX and the text in red is from me.
Greetings SSXXXXXX,
See below for comments…
Regards,
Theodore R. Herazy, DC, LAc
Peyronie’s Disease Institute
Dupuytren’s Contracture Institute
From: ssxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 11:14 AM
To: Theodore Herazy <herazy@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Ultrasound question
Dr Herazy, thanks for the prompt response to that last question. To remind you about my condition I want to remind you that I was injured during catheterization for prostate surgery two years ago. The surgeon denied doing anything wrong but there is no other explanation. I never had any injury there during sex and I take no drugs. I read your article about how common it is for PD to start after rough catheterization and I know better that he is protecting himself from a lawsuit. He said to take some vitamin E and it would go away in a year or so but I found out how wrong he was. I will never go back to him. I learned I had a problem after getting scared in the middle of the night when I found a 45 degree bend where I was straight the night before.I lost 2” of length and sometimes I have a bottleneck that looks pathetic. After googling about Peyronies I found your website and used some of your ideas but not all of them. I used Wobenzym I got locally at a strip mall and lumbrokinase (the worm enzyme) from another website. PDI/DCI just concluded a lumbrokinase research project. This study was halted due to minimal/no reduction of fibrous tissue after adding lumbrokinase to a number of existing treatment plans, and because 4 of the 14 volunteer subjects reported increased bleeding time after starting in the study. These were our preliminary findings, and yours might be different, but you should keep these findings in mind. I spent hours learning about PD treatment and now use some of the PDI ideas although not much happened when I was on the two enzymes. You did not learn enough, my friend. Not much happened because you were not doing applying the PDI concepts correctly. You are fooling yourself to think you can influence Peyronie’s disease when you pick and choose with a small number of therapy items like this. Popping a few enzyme pills every now and then does not help PD because it takes a lot more to support and encourage the healing process with a stubborn problem like PD. A broad-based and diverse treatment plan is required to more naturally and spontaneously help the tissue heal PD like half of the men whose Peyronie’s disease goes away on its own. Later after nothing happened with the two enzymes I decided to do it your way and I got a large plan a month ago. I am desperate to get well because PD is ruining my sex life and the thought of living with this ugly problem is more than I can stand. I am 63 years old and in the best shape of my life after getting up to running 20-25 miles a week. If it weren’t for having Peyronies I would be perfect.
At the risk of being a total pest I have another question. This is the end of my first month of following the large PD plan.So far so good, so I want to make my first change in the plan. You are still not following the PDI concepts. Why have you waited a month to make your first dosage increase? You must actually follow all treatment protocol that you were given when you placed your order with PDI. How many and which vitamin should increase at this time? That is entirely up to you; it does not make much difference where you start so long as you make sure to eventually increase all therapy items in your plan in a systematic way. Please review your notes. You are certainly free to alter the PDI treatment ideas, but when you do you can assume your results will be different than if you closely followed your notes. Look at the instructions in the “Outline for Natural Treatment” form you will see how you increase the members if the Group 1 enzyme category and all of the Group 2 Support therapies. You are not following the standard instructions when you wait a month to make your first increase, not the 7-10 days as suggested. During the first 2-3 dosage increases it is suggested to be more aggressive by increasing the dosage by more than one pill and more than one therapy item is increased at a time. After a few of these faster/heavier dosage increases in the early stages you should slow down so that your plan follows a one pill/one therapy item per 7-10 day pattern. Doing it this way gets your plan off the ground floor of starting dosages so that you get into the range of therapeutic dosages faster. Otherwise, if you make your dosage increases every 30 days it will take you a year or more to start seeing anything good happen; you will get tired and frustrated with this prolonged treatment and quit out of discouragement. It is a common mistake to follow a super-slow and super-conservative approach that usually leads to disappointment. The only time I encourage people to follow a slow plan like yours is when there is a history of digestive problems and gut sensitivity. If this applies to you, then continue, but be aware that such a reduced schedule of dosage increases will prolong your PD treatment and you will have to live with that. But for the most part, get to a reasonable therapeutic dosage level as quickly as you can. Treatment can be fun and rewarding but you have to push at the dosages. Besides the basic large plan might it be a good time to add additional items to my plan? There are a few things I see on the list that are interesting like Neprinol and L-arginine. Do you have any ideas or suggestions if any other therapies could be helpful in my case? A plan with even more variety of therapy items is not a bad idea, but first get your basic large plan more developed at a higher dosage level. Otherwise you will have a huge plan that is functioning at a low dosage level that will not get results. It might not be necessary to broaden your plan with any more items. Chances are that by the time you get your basic large plan dosages increased sufficiently you will start to see a reduction in the size, shape, density and surface features of your PD scar, and it will not seem so important to add more therapy items to your plan. Keep things simple in these early stages. Complicate your plan with additions of more therapies only if your plan is not helping you to reduce the fibrous tissue. I want to be as aggressive as possible because my girlfriend is 33 years old and she doesn’t understand my PD problem and I do not want to lose her.She says she is worried about how it might affect her like she could catch PD.Do you think it would be a good idea to get the gentle stretching DVD and include that also to what I am doing? Gentle manual stretching is always a good addition to any plan because it is unique in the way it directly works with the shortened fibrous mass. It is a mainstay of a lot of successful plans. In regard to your girlfriend, there is a lot to say. Reading between the lines here, SSXXXXXX, it sounds like having a girlfriend half your age could be complicating your life with all kinds of personal pressure you do not deserve or need right now. Perhaps the best thing to help your sexual difficulties is the book, “Peyronie’s Disease and Sex.” You might be feeling pressure to perform or embarrassment because of your deformity or loss of size. If this is so, you definitely need to get your thinking straightened out before you make matters worse with fears of rejection and thoughts of negativity. ED often starts with a mindset that is rooted in fear and rejection. Don’t allow yourself to get in that rut. I work with guys all the time about these personal problems; if you need to talk, set up some time for a phone call and I can help you. TRH
Thanks,
SSXXXXXXXX
That’s all for now. Hope this information helps many faithful readers. If you want to contact me with a question, please go to the “Ask Dr. Herazy” Q & A section of either website at Peyronies Disease Institute or Dupuytren Contracture Institute.
Hot weather is starting to crank up here. Enjoy your summer. Stay focused on your treatment plan. TRH
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