Job Description Grows for Our Utility Hormone

Just when you thought that serotonin was passé, and you’d tossed all your half-used bottles of S.S.R.I.-type antidepressants because the ones that didn’t give you nausea or smother your libido left you wondering whether you were in the placebo arm of a clinical trial, here comes a raft of new discoveries that sweeps the small, evolutionarily ancient and slyly powerful signaling molecule back on to center stage.

Researchers lately have learned that serotonin plays an impressive number of critical roles throughout the body, both below the neck and above it, and from the earliest days of prenatal pre-sentience. One team has found that serotonin starts seeping into the embryonic forebrain during the first trimester of pregnancy, helping to shape the basic neural circuitry that later in life will be applied to learning, emoting and consulting a psychiatrist.

More surprising still, Pat Levitt of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the University of Southern California and his colleagues reported in the April 21 issue of the journal Nature, the creator of all that architectonic prenatal serotonin turns out to be an organ long dismissed as a passive sieve: the placenta. Other researchers have determined that serotonin in the gut helps orchestrate the remodeling of bone, the lifelong buildup and breakdown of osteoclasts and osteoblasts that...

A newer class of antidepressants goes further, aiming not only at the transporter, but also at one or more of the 15 different serotonin receptors, an approach that may heighten the effectiveness of the drug while limiting the spillover side effects. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration approved one of these pharmacological novelties, an antidepressant called Vilazodone, which is said to be reasonably free of some of the most vexing side effects seen in the standard transporter-only drugs, notably weight gain and sexual difficulties...

Optimize your serotonin!!!!

PTSD is associated with deficiencies in dopamine, serotonin and other neural transmitters. A chromium fortified topical may actually provide symptomatic relief within several hours without annoying side effects.

The highest tissue levels of chromium occur at birth and large population studies have demonstrated that tissue chromium declines throughout life. The benefits in regard to PTSD intervention efforts are related to the massive increases in insulin signaling action that accompany the optimization of bioavailable chromium.

Increased signaling action restores small amounts of “new iron” into the substantia nigra pars compacta that are required for the production of dopamine and other neural transmitters. An excess of “old iron” in the substantia nigra pars compacta and other areas of the brain is associated with reductions of insulin signaling efficiency and pathologies such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Multiple Sclerosis. Increased insulin signaling action also increases the amounts of tryptophan that are uploaded through the brain blood barrier to the neurons for conversion to serotonin.

Recent publications suggest that a significant number of our wounded warriors are coming back from desert deployments with PTSD for which there is no perfected remedy. There is now good cause to examine a low cost and evidence based based alternative to the use of SSRI’s (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) as the primary protocol. One very significant downside is that the military cannot employ soldiers on active duty that are using SSRI’s. Another issue might be that SSRI’s do not address the underlying pathology.

The etiology of PTSD is complex and worth a comment. American soldiers are almost always on the heavy side of tissue iron loading (not measured by blood iron studies) and chromium deficient: this is caused by their diet and a lifetime without sufficient sweat. Sweat causes excretion of iron/chromium. The iron is readily replaced but the chromium is not. Organ meats have provided the optimal sources of chromium for primitive humans and other carnivores/omnivores.

The excess tissue iron blocks the proper levels of chromium absorption and retention. The deficiency of tissue chromium reduces the efficiency of insulin signaling and the downstream ability for cells to absorb, iron, chromium, glucose, and amino acids.

Iron accumulates in the liver and other organs. When loaded with iron, the liver secretes hepcidin in most healthy individuals. Hepcidin down regulates the deliverable HCl at mealtime. Low stomach acid (hypochlorhydria) prevents the complete digestion of meat proteins and the proper absorption of amino acids through the gut. Americans lose 1% of their muscle mass each year from their early twenties because of this hypoaminoacidemia and reduced insulin mediated amino acid tissue absorption.

During desert deployments, American soldiers lose significant amounts of iron and chromium in sweat. The blood levels of “new iron” and chromium are lower because of insufficient digestion of meat. Lower blood levels of “new iron” and chromium are further accentuated by poor insulin sensitivity: reduced insulin mediated absorption of “new iron”/chromium from the blood into the substantia nigra pars compacta and all other parts of the body).

Optimizing insulin signaling efficiency increases glucose loading into the hippo campos for cognitive enhancements, increases tryptophan loading into the brain for serotonin conversion, and increases iron loading into the substantia nigra pars compacta for dopamine and neural transmitter synthesis. Optimizing insulin signaling efficiency can be accomplished with Intravenous Chromium Chloride or by applying a Chromium fortified topical lotion.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/30/4/531.abstract
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/11/2741.full
http://info.med.yale.edu/therarad/summers/Sci198/fromMetalsinMed.pdf

Orally ingested chromium supplements have been proven to be inferior in the optimization of chromium via the transferrin receptor. Americans ingest daily approximately 1000 times the amount of iron as they do chromium. The iron easily wins the affinity/abundance contest for space on the safe transport protein transferrin and the chromium is chelated into a useless salt and excreted by the kidney without biological impact. Avoiding the iron rich environment in the gut is of paramount importance in optimizing the biological impact of chromium. It is the transdermal delivery of chromium that dramatically increases the bioavailability of chromium within the insulin signaling transduction event. This is accomplished in an immediately observable way by avoiding the iron rich gut environment with IV or transdermal chromium that can access transferrin proteins that are not already saturated with iron.

When apo-chromodulin (with four chromic ions) is not securing the base unit of the insulin receptor (it is not protecting the the insulin signaling event from the interruptions associated with phosphatase cleavage) only 10 to 15% of the rate of potential glucose uptake through the glut4 receptor is achievable (the rate of glucose uptake is reduced by 85 to 90%).

Seven abstracts have been published within the last 90 days which accentuate the increasing research interest in the essential role of chromium in insulin signaling and human health. These abstracts feature the benefits of chromium in relation to hyperlipidemic hearts, fat induced insulin resistance/lipid abnormalities, body composition in overweight children, vascular reactivity/cardiac ischemia-reperfusion in hypertensive rats, and anti-hyperglycemic activity. The best single measure of the importance of chromium is the Harvard Doctor’s study where lower chromium levels in toenails predicts diabetes and heart disease in otherwise healthy physicians:

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/9/2211.long

I can provide testimonials from several retired Military Officers (Ph.D.’s) that address the benefits of restoring chromium balances.

Ken Russell
Diabetes Prevention Project
832-655-6520

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.