Greetings to all PDI and DCI Warriors,
Welcome to this September 2018 Peyronie’s Disease Institute newsletter. This past month I received many emails about treatment success, and will share one of the more informative and helpful ones in this edition.
But first we will start by asking everyone who has Dupuytren’s contracture to participate in a new DCI research project that only requires you to answer a few simple survey questions. There is nothing complicated or tricky about it; most questions can be answered with a simple yes/no. It will take not much more than five minutes to complete.
The DCI Survey on the Variability of the Dupuytren’s Contracture Palm Nodule is very important because it is the first attempt of its kind to collect and interpret information about the ability of the palm lump to change, come and go, or fade in and out in the early stages of Dupuytren’s contracture. Some palm lumps change a lot (they come and go, get bigger and then smaller and then bigger again several times) in the early stages of DC. Other palm lumps do not do this at all; they just slowly get bigger and harder over time and never get smaller once they start. Either way – if your palm lump never changed or it has changed a lot – I need to hear from you, please.
How common is it for early DC palm lumps to change in a back and forth cycle? Is there a difference between the people whose palm nodules change and those whose palm nodules do not change? Can we do some something to make everyone’s palm lumps get smaller and softer? We are going to find out if you help us.
Please take the Dupuytren’s Contracture Institute survey: Dupuytren’s contracture survey. Thank you for your help and participation.
After taking the DCI survey please come back to read a short email exchange that will help you to treat your Peyronie’s disease and Dupuytren’s contracture better.
Now the next part of the newsletter. Once again the familiar and popular feature of presenting a simple exchange and blending of emails between one of the many people who send emails to me for assistance and my response to it. All of the following Peyronie’s disease treatment information and ideas can be applied to Dupuytren’s contracture, so please read through even if you have only DC.
This particular email was chosen from the stack because it is like so many emails asking for help to start to see progress, but at the same time admitting that he has not followed the PDI treatment strategy very well.
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 MCXXXXX and the text in red is from me.
Greetings MCXXXXXXX,
See below for comments…
Regards,
Theodore R. Herazy, DC, LAc
Peyronie’s Disease Institute
Dupuytren’s Contracture Institute
From: MCXXXXXXXX [mailto:mcxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2018 11:14 AM
To: Theodore Herazy <herazy@comcast.net>
Subject: Advice re Large Plan
Hi Dr. Herazy,
I’m emailing you because I’m restarting my plan and I would like your expertise.
I’ve had Peyronie’s for the past 9 years (I’m 29 years old now). WOW. Just a 20 year old kid who had to deal with Peyronie’s disease. That had to be tough. I’ve been taking the large plan intermittently for the last 4 years because of lack of finances. I realize from all of your newsletters that I need to focus on this plan every day in order to see improvement. For this reason, I’ve been saving and I have a new job which will enable me to purchase the large plan on schedule.
Let me start off by saying I have a significant amount of scar tissue. I have a bottleneck in the middle, round scar on top left, middle, and right, and also a strand of scar that wraps around just below the head. Even though you have considerable scar tissue I notice that you do not mention any details about the size, shape, density and surface features (SSDS) of any of it. It would help your treatment plan greatly if you spent some time and effort defining and making notes about the SSDS of all of them as much as you can. Detail, detail and specifics. Develop a detailed verbal description of each. Draw each one to scale and put in notes about what you notice. When I was taking the large plan I didn’t notice a change in the shape of any of the scars. Are you sure? If you have not studied the details of your scars and written notes you will not be able with any confidence to know any change in your scars. Memory is not enough. Time and again I run into men who are absolutely convinced at the start of self-treatment that they will remember what their scars were like when they start care. All of them get confused and are not sure if they are making progress a month or two into the plan. They give me the familiar, “Gee I think it is the same but I am not really sure.” Worse yet are the men who are actually making progress, and do not know it because the changes are so small at the beginning – and they quit care not realizing that good things are happening. I was quite thorough with my plan, No you weren’t. If you were following your plan for a month or two, following the notes provided for your benefit, you would have been at a higher dosage level for the MSM and PABA, and especially the nattokinase, than what I see below. Light doses are not wrong or bad, but they are starting doses only. If you want to be a body builder there is nothing wrong or bad about lifting 10 pound weights, but you have to realize that 10 pound weights are only a starting point. A light weight will not is not able to increase the muscle very well – you have to push the tissue with heavier weights. Light weights get you started, heavy weights make the tissue change. Along a similar line, therapeutic Alt Med treatment doses tend to be larger and more aggressive. I left off two months ago taking:
Nep – 2-3-6 Good. This doesn’t mean I think 2/3/6 is the correct or magical Neprinol dose that will make everything better, but only that it is a reasonable dosage at which you might expect something to happen if you are doing everything else correctly and at a good dosage and effectively.
Vitamin C – 1-1-1 Stay with this one or maybe increase a little.
Vitamin E – 1-1-1 Stay, even drop down to 2/day to save a few dollars if necessary.
MSM – 1-1-1 Consider increasing.
PABA – 1-1-1 Consider increasing.
DMSO – once daily during stretch Are you also using Vit E oil and Super CP Serum? You should be using them. If not, they are important additions that can be used easily for 2-3 months before replacement; good value for the money.
Nattokinase – 1-1-1 Consider increasing perhaps. Consider replacing Nattokinase with Bromelain 5000 if you do not see scar changes with a more aggressive plan; it is a more varied enzyme that approaches the scar tissue from a different chemical basis.
I didn’t see much change in the scars – I think this may be because I wasn’t as strict with my diet as I should have been. No dairy When I treated my Peyronie’s disease keeping off dairy and all cold foods was hugely important. For you it might not be. But you will now know if you do not try, right? Google about an “alkaline diet” for more information and tips. or alcohol but breads, cold drinks (but without ice) on occasion at restaurants, and some red meats all may have had something to do with this. When I first started this 4 years ago, I was eating quite healthy. Oatmeal with fruit for breakfast, a lot of kale, veggies, garlic (either garlic pills or garlic with meals) and also very light for dinner, and noticed some changes. The reason I stopped is because I stretched for too long one day and noticed redness, and woke up the next morning and it looked the same as it used to. So I took a break for a bit. As I start out this new plan, I will try to adopt a healthy, light diet rich in vegetables, and light stretching. LIGHT stretching is indeed the key. If you were red in the area you stretched you were not truly using light force as directed in the PDI stretching video – you were overstretching and this cannot give you the deep dull ache (DDA) that occurs when the tunica albuginea of the shaft are actually being stretched . If you do not evoke the DDA you are not doing it correctly, and what you are doing is a waste of time. Doing the light stretching for a long time should not cause redness or any adverse reaction. Actually, properly done light stretching cannot be overdone and should elicit good results even when prolonged. Might be a good idea to watch the DVD again and pick up information and ideas you might have missed or misunderstood the 1st time through. If you have any suggestions it would be appreciated. Besides using less force when stretching, not much to say. But I did notice you did not mention moist heat. Don’t underestimate therapeutic value of moist heat. Cheap and very effective. Use 5-10 minutes before a light stretching session.
It’s been difficult since I developed Peyronie’s, especially in the beginning stages. But right now, I’ve tried to adopt a healthy, low-stress lifestyle that I think will help me in the long run with my blood sugar (I have Type 1 Diabetes). I run 3-4 miles a day, 5 days a week. I do drink Gatorade in case I run into low blood sugar, or I may have Cliff Bloks during the run. Orange juice and Nature Valley bars are a go-to for when I’m low. No more gambling for me because I notice that when I’m stressed and gambling, scars are harder and more noticeable. Great that you noticed the correlation. Assume that there are others. Just keep your mind open to possibility that there are other keys out there like that and look for them. Do what works best. Some of them might be goofy and a waste of time, others not so. Just do what you THINK might be affecting your PD, and see what doing that thing does to the SSDS of your scars. If doing that thing for 4-6 weeks does not affect the SSDS, go on to the next thing you THINK might affect your scar tissue. This is called heuristic investigation and research in health care; it is a standard and legitimate way that serious medical research and treatment is conducted all over the world.
In this email I wanted to give you as much information as possible so you can have a better understanding of what may work for me. Variety and expansion of a treatment plan is always a good idea, but not always necessary. What is more important than variety of treatment is faithfully pushing at the treatment dosages and conducting other external therapies while carefully monitoring the SSDS for changes Your current plan is big enough (no one can say for sure until you see actual improvement of your SSDS) to get results, if you kick it in the butt and work it aggressively. A small well conducted and aggressive plan gives better results than a poorly applied large plan. But it still hinges on knowing for a fact the SSDS of your scars so you can identify progress. Otherwise you are just a guesser. I will not let this take over my life. That is a great mindset. Dig in, get serious, stay dedicated. I am humble and focused, and ready to make changes. Thank you for the monthly newsletters as those give me hope for the future. Thank you. That means more than I can say. TRH
MCXXXXXXXXXXX
I hope everyone found this issue of the PDI Newsletter interesting and informative so you can do a better job of helping your own PD or DC condition.
MCXXXX’s story is a familiar one. For financial reasons he is having a difficult time following through with the plan that he started, but wants to do better. Many times a great level of discipline and sacrifice are necessary that does not come easily. Total commitment to the cause is required to make changes in these two stubborn problems. Even so, as I tell everyone who asks about treatment results: I get 8 to 10 reports of moderate to marked success with the Alt Med treatment of PD and DC for every one report of failure, when the treatment is applied as described in the notes everyone receives with our products.
If you didn’t take the 5 minute Dupuytren’s Contracture Institute survey, please click here to take the Dupuytren’s contracture survey. Thank you for your help in this worthy research attempt.
If you want to contact me with a question, please do so through the “Ask Dr. Herazy” Q & A section of either website at Peyronies Disease Institute or Dupuytren Contracture Institute.
Stay focused on your treatment plan. TRH
