Chilli receptors detect heart attack pain

Dr. Christopher always used to say that he never lost a patient to a heart attack because he gave them Cayenne pepper in water at the first sign of the attack. The cayenne pepper never failed to stop the heart attack. Others, Richard Schulze for example, have rebuilt malformed portions of the heart using cayenne pepper. Dr. Christopher used to say that cayenne is a specific food for the heart.

I read the following article and I'm amazed that they are now planning to spend billions of dollars on finding a new drug to fill these receptor sites and relieve heart pain when cayenne pepper does the exact same thing and costs pennies!

Chilli receptors detect heart attack pain

• 15:42 03 September 2003
• NewScientist.com news service
• Daphne Chung

The same receptors that sense the burning taste of chilli peppers also sense chest pain during a heart attack, scientists have discovered.

The receptors are only present on the outer surface of the heart, which may explain why some "silent" heart attacks produce no pain. The new research also identifies a new target for drugs that alleviate chest pain caused by coronary heart disease, scientists say.

Vanilloid receptor 1 (VR1) is a pain sensor that is abundant in the skin and tongue and picks up the searing sensation of chilli peppers. Hui-Lin Pan, at Pennsylvania State University in the US, investigated whether it is also present in the heart.

"What was very striking was that we found the receptors were localised only on the surface of the heart," he told New Scientist. The outer surface was densely covered with VR1, but no receptors were detected on the inner surface.

"This is the first time anyone has documented these receptors in the heart," says Harold Schultz at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

Inner feeling

Pan also found that VR1 was important in triggering the cardiac reflex response, which causes the chest pain associated with most heart attacks.

However, patients with silent ischaemia suffer damage on the inner surface of the heart. The lack of VR1 receptors on the inner surface could explain why no pain is felt.

VR1 could also be a target for drugs that reduce or prevent chest pain, Pan says. Schultz agrees: "If these receptors are involved in pain perception in heart attack, then it could open an avenue for looking for drugs that can block this pain."

Pungent ingredient

Capsaicin, the pungent ingredient in chilli peppers, activates VR1. Previous studies had shown that, when applied to the heart surfaces of animals, capsaicin causes changes in blood pressure and heart rate similar to those seen in heart attacks. But the receptors involved in producing these changes were not known.

Pan used immunofluorescence labelling to show that VR1 was located on the outer surface of the heart. To determine whether the receptor was involved in the cardiac reflex response, he destroyed the nerves containing VR1 in one group of rats and compared their response with a group with intact VR1 receptors.

In the intact rats, both capsaicin and bradykinin - a chemical released during heart attacks - led to an increase in blood pressure and nerve activity. But in rats with no VR1, no increases were detected at all.

This surprised Pan. "We initially expected a partial response when we tried to trigger a reflex, because we thought other receptors would compensate for the lack of VR1." The absence of response suggests that VR1 is the most important receptor in chest pain.

Journal reference: Journal of Physiology (vol 551, p 515)

Formula for Newborn Babies

I've found this formula to be useful for newborns who for one reason or another cannot take mother's milk. Of course nursing from the mother is usually the best option for newborns, but in case this is not possible, this formula may be helpful:

3/4 fresh goat's milk
1/4 spring water
1 teaspoon Baobab fruit powder (per baby bottle)

Goat's milk is the healthiest substitute for mother's milk, especially over pasteurized and homogenized cow's milk or soy formulas. In addition to (and perhaps because of) the fact that soy and cow's milk formulas are denatured, full of hormones and genetically modified substances, many children are allergic or intolerant to cow's milk and soy.

Click here for information on Baobab which is used as a nutritive supplement in this formula.

Like any substance it's best to test the child beforehand to make sure this formula is the best for him or her. I use muscle testing for this. A kinesiologist or NAET practitioner can do this for you but it's best if you learn muscle testing for yourself so that you empower yourself and your family.

Chillies turn up the heat on tumours

From NewScientist.com

Chillies turn up the heat on tumours

• 13:22 15 March 2006
• NewScientist.com news service
• Roxanne Khamsi

The same component of jalapeño peppers that makes them burn the tongue also appears to kill prostate cancer cells. Prostate tumours in mice treated with the compound, called capsaicin, shrank to one-fifth the size of those in non-treated mice, found a new study.

To explore capsaicin’s effect, Phillip Koeffler of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, US, and colleagues exposed human prostate cancer cells in a laboratory dish to the natural compound. They found that capsaicin dramatically slowed the proliferation of the cells in the dish.

And this effect increased as the dose of the chilli compound was raised. Three per cent of prostate cancer cells committed “suicide” – programmed cell death – at low concentrations, rising to up to 75% of tumour cells dying at a higher dose.

Koeffler says this is the first experimental evidence supporting the notion that capsaicin stops the growth of prostate cancer cells.

Human cancer

He believes that capsaicin jump starts a pathway that triggers cell death. Molecular tests suggest that it achieves this by causing a cascade of events inside the cell that lead to the release of a protein complex called NF-kappa Beta, which subsequently causes the cell to self-destruct. This is crucial since cancer is characterised by the uncontrolled growth of cells.

The team also found that capsaicin suppressed the growth of human prostate cancer cells by about 80%. These cells were grafted into mice with suppressed immune systems.

But Koeffler says that men concerned about prostate cancer should not interpret these findings as a reason to up their consumption of hot peppers. He stresses that the compound has not been shown to prevent prostate cancer but instead simply slows its growth. And he adds that he hopes to see human trials in the next two years assessing capsaicin’s effect on prostate cancer.

Take a chilli pill

After prostate cancer is surgically removed, it tends to reappear in about a quarter of patients, the researchers note. For this reason, they say that capsaicin may be most effective in slowing cancer’s return instead of stopping it from first developing.

He adds that one also must take dosages into consideration. A 200-pound (90-kilogram) person would have to eat about 10 fresh habañera peppers – one of the hottest chillies around – per week to consume an amount of capsaicin equivalent to the levels received by Koeffler’s mice.

A habañera typically contains 300,000 Scoville units – a scale used to measure the hotness of chillis – making them positively scorching to the mouth in comparison with the more popular jalapeños, which contain roughly 2500 to 5000 Scoville units. For this reason, he says it is unreasonable to imagine anyone eating fresh peppers to prevent the return of prostate cancer: “You would have to take it in pill form.”

Journal reference: Cancer Research (DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-05-0087)

Messages from Gold

Right now I'm living and working in a large, new house that was once an earring factory. The owners of this factory have moved the factory to a larger building across town and have kindly allowed me to stay and practice here temporarily. This mother and father, also the founders of this earring business which works mostly with gold, live across the street. Their 3 daughters and their partners are also working within this business in one capacity or another. I am friends with this family as a result of working on their son/grandson who had food allergies. They invited me to come work in this "ex-gold factory" as I like to think of it and my clientele here has blossomed quickly.

These people have worked with gold for 30 years and for the entire lives of the children. The windows of this house are surrounded by metal bars to keep out intruders. The bullet proof window coverings were removed right before I moved in. Video cameras still sit watching the ex-gold factory.

The family's house across the street is also surrounded in metal bars - all of the windows and doors. The metal has been colored yellow and there are little metal flowers embedded into the bars to make their protective covering look artistic. They have 4 video cameras on the grounds of their house which show the entire grounds between the 4 of them. The views from these cameras are available via their television inside, so at any moment they can turn on the tv and see what is going on around their house and on the street out front. Sometimes when I arrive for dinner they open the gate before I ring, and I enter the dining room to see the 4 views shown on tv.

I'd say this family has it's problems just like any other. Without exposing too many of their personal details, they have their health problems, loveless relationships, overworked family members, black sheep etc. Just a few days ago one of the daughters, her husband and I were discussing the irony that they work with the most strongly protective metal in existence, one symbolizing enlightenment, yet they surround themselves in life draining metal in order to keep out the burglars, or better said to "secure" their livelihood!

To me their situation is awe inspiring because it's a perfect parable for the common human condition and how we create prisoners out of ourselves by trying to protect our "valuables" - which like their gold is a treasure outside of themselves. But this goes beyond the general lesson... This is about Gold and the key to bliss. Gold has been presenting itself to me in various forms and factors for several months now, and I've been watching closely it's message.

First I was invited here to work in the ex-gold factory. Then I immersed myself in Dan Winter, who explains how gold is the perfect symbol for bliss. So much so that taking it can create states of bliss, but then you must be careful not to become addicted to it. Why? Because your DNA is capable of making this same bliss but if you're supplementing it all the time, it loses it's capacity to do this (like taking insulin reduces the remaining ability of the pancreas to create insulin etc).

Dan Winter (also Zacharia Sitchen and many others...) discusses the story regarding the progenitors of the human race and how they arrived on planet earth to mine gold. After a few thousand years they were sick of doing the hard labor of mining so they created a slave race to mine the gold for them - humans! The reason they were mining gold was because they had become addicted to it and had lost the ability to make their own bliss. So taking gold for them was the bliss instigator!

In other words, gold is the whole reason the human race exists in the first place! This is valid as symbolism too. Fortunately for us, humans still have the capacity to make their own bliss via their DNA and don't need to rely on gold... but it's a skill that needs to be "remembered", cultivated, given much more of our attention. This is hard to do in a state of fear, protection and ignorance. It's hard to do eating tainted food and breathing tainted air, eating and sleeping within a house surrounded by metal, being in loveless relationships, sitting for 9 hours a day under fake lighting, spending little time in introspection and watching the blond babes in bikinis dance around in all the game shows (welcome to Italian tv!).

The point is that each of us has the ability to reach and maintain bliss (gold). But just like the earring factory family, we shut down this bliss by emersing ourselves in surroundings that don't cultivate this bliss (like pretty bars for our prisons). We do this out of ignorance (we don't recognize our own potential within ourselves) and fear (got to protect my gold!). In the end we spend so much time protecting and looking outside ourselves that we have forgotten about the gold... and that it doesn't come for free. I think this is part of gold's message for me. I'll soon be delving into gold from another angle (with care) so I'm sure more insights to come!