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In the end of 2009, I was diagnosed with a degenerative and untreatable disease.
Months later, I was gifted by the discovery of a treatment
that has provided many patients a life without a trace of the disease.
This film aims at disseminating the existence of this treatment.
[audio from my first appointment with Dr. Cícero Coimbra, neurologist - May/2010]
What should we expect? We are to expect that within six months after the beginning of your treatment,
the disease will be in remission.
We expect no more relapses
and with time, some brain lesions might indeed disappear from your MRI scan.
Vitamin D For an alternative therapy
I was 20 years old.
One day I was walking around and my right foot started to drag.
Came out of nowhere as usually happens with any other patient
One day I woke up with a weird sensation in my left arm, I thought
it could be something related to a recent physical activity during surfing.
I had horrible dizziness. I couldn’t get up from my bed. The roof seemed to be spinning really fast. It was horrible.
I started having trouble walking straight; problems to climb stairs...
And it was slowly getting worse.
It’s very complicated. No family is prepared to
deal with a chronic and progressive sickness affecting a beloved member.
In addition, specially in Brazil, people don’t know much about multiple sclerosis.
In multiple sclerosis, the nervous system is attacked
by the immune system – The brain and the spinal cord.
Therefore, the patients might present virtually any neurologic symptoms.
It is estimated that there might be up to 50 thousand
people affected in Brazil. Mostly young people.
The disease may lead to blindness, paraplegia, being
stuck to a wheelchair – very often evolve to a situation like that – from an early stage of life.
Until the final diagnosis I had been through 6 months of
exams, medical monitoring and multiple corticoid therapies.
Diagnosed in 2009, began the vitamin D treatment a few months after that.
I was only able to identify that, effectively, it was a paralyzing disease.
Following the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, he spent many years using corticoids, which caused a series of permanent side-effects. He’s been using the vitamin D treatment for two years.
It was a really big shock. I didn’t want to believe that I had it,
specially since I didn’t know anything about the disease or its treatment.
Diagnosed in 2006, began the vitamin D treatment in 2009.
Then I started reading about the disease, and realized that the
perspective for a reasonable quality of life was small.
Chances are that you are going to get worse.
It’s true anguish.
You think the worst. You feel that there is no hope,
and you're scared that that things will continue to get
worse soon, and you don’t know how to deal with it.
Multiple Sclerosis is usually treated with injected substances called
interferons, that help to control the disease manifestations.
Several pharmaceutical companies compete in the market offering treatment with interferon and similar substances.
The monthly cost of the treatment with these drugs may reach over 5,000 US dollars
per patient, being provided free of charge by the Brazilian health care system.
Interferon therapy reduces disease relapses by 30%,
meaning that patients under that therapy still experience 70% of the relapses,
and has major side-effects that lower the patient’s quality of life.
It was a painful injection; it gave me headaches, indisposition;
it was disturbing to think that every day you would
eat breakfast and take another injection.
I took my first dose on June 3rd, 2003. It was unforgettable, horrible; a huge suffering.
Had the first symptoms of the disease in 1977, but was diagnosed only in 2003. She’s been under high-dose vitamin D treatment since 2006.
I could feel each drop of that injection getting
into each cell of my body... the whole night.
Actually, I became far worse when I started taking interferon.
Diagnosed in 2006, her neurological disabilities progressed until 2010, when she was about to be confined to a wheelchair. She's been under vitamin D treatment for 5 months.
I couldn’t particularly stand the pain of the injections.
At night time, I had to inject myself while in bed, because I couldn't move anymore afterwards.
Then the frequency of injections increased to 3 times per week.
Then I had no more rest...every other day I had to take another injection.
And I was getting persistently worse; I was about to use crutches, the left side of my body was compromised.
I endured this treatment for 3 months. Then I gave up saying
that I would rather let the disease take its course than having such treatment.
As far as I know, many people take the conventional treatment and keep getting worse.
Maybe slowly, but worse. So I couldn’t see any improvements.
Actually the traditional treatment gives you the impression that something changes in your body,
but I couldn’t see any benefit.
I got benefit from the treatment with vitamin D.
Studies on the effects of vitamin D on the
immune system began around 40 years ago.
It was when the epidemiologists wanted to know
the geographic distribution of autoimmune diseases around the globe.
They verified that close to the equator line there was a low prevalence of these diseases,
and that the percentage of affected individuals increases proportionally with the distance from the equator.
Eventually, further research showed that this finding was related to lower exposure to solar radiation of people living in higher latitudes,
leading to reduced production of vitamin D in the human skin - the major effect of solar exposure in our body.
My mother searched the internet and found an interview with Dr. Coimbra.
She scheduled an appointment for me. I was reluctant at first since I was tired
of hearing the same things over and over again... but eventually I decided to attend,
and it was the beginning of the good part of the story...
Approximately in 2003 we became aware of the medical obligation of not leaving those patients without due correction of vitamin D deficiency.
We verified, according to published literature data,
that the recommended daily dose of 200-600 international units
would not correct the level of deficiency found in these patients.
So we started employing more realistic (physiologically realistic) daily doses - like 10,000 units -
an amount easily achieved within a few minutes of solar exposure in adults.
And we noticed a remarkable clinical improvement in nearly all patients with autoimmune diseases.
From this observation we come to further increase daily doses, trying to reach the highest level within the reference values,
always supported by ancillary lab tests to ensure that no patient would have side effects,
we observed that several of these individuals found themselves completely free of the manifestations of these autoimmune diseases.
A few months after I started the Vitamin D treatment,
relapses became a lot less frequent.
Before that, I would have on average one relapse every 15 days.
In comparison to how it was before, the difference is extreme.
I feel much, much better; with respect to my mood, my outlook, hope...
First it was the fatigue;
I started feeling a disposition that I had not experienced in years.
Then I got the strength to move better, to write better,
to hold a fork and a knife, to cut a slice of pizza...
For instance, before the treatment with vitamin D, when taking a bath I could not use shampoo to wash my hair, etc.
- For how long couldn’t you do that sort of things?
- During the time I was taking Interferon: from 2004 to 2010.
And soon after I started taking vitamin D, within ten days, I was free of pain.
It was really impressive. The pain was simply taken away from by body.
Gradually, within a 2-year period, all my disabilities disappeared.
All the neurological impairment I had on the left side of my body – particularly that of my left foot – was gone after that time period.
I’m a normal person now. I walk normally. I have no limitations. Nothing at all.
Having spent all those years without hope,
And then having this novel treatment, which is a simple one, inexpensive,
provides effective results, and – most importantly – is free of adverse effects.
In contrast, the side effects of the traditional treatments
were as burdensome as the disease itself.
There are quite extensive scientific data showing that the vitamin D deficiency
is related to prostate, breast and intestinal cancers.
These cancers are much more common at higher latitudes. There are prospective studies regarding this issue.
There are thousands of published studies on the
effects of vitamin D on the best known and most frequent autoimmune diseases:
multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis,
psoriasis, vitiligo, type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis,
and several other diseases that remarkably reduce the quality of life of affected individuals.
Vitamin D makes your body react against the harmful effects
of autoimmunity – in his case, rheumatism.
Leandro began to suffer from severe pain affecting multiple body regions in 2006 and went through repeated hospital admissions. Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, he started treatment with vitamin D in 2011.
We were skeptical at first, and yet, very sympathetically, he said at the end of the interview: ‘Within six months
you will forget about the pain.” We were so moved
that both he and I were trying to hold back the tears.
I don’t know if the doctor could understand why we were so moved.
That was because we used to go through enormous suffering at each relapse of his disease. My wife, my daughter (his sister)
and I – the whole family – suffered from his suffering. It was an unimaginable suffering.
During one of the hospitalizations I was given 12 shots of morphine.
After the twelfth shot I went into respiratory failure.
It is the kind of image that remains etched in one's memory forever. A son asking:
"For God’s sake, father, don’t let me feel the pain anymore."
Can you imagine walking this path for 5 years,
and not being able to find someone or something that could make it stop?
The treatment with vitamin D in fact relieved me from pain, made me feel better,
and allowed me to return to normal life.
I estimate that after 5 months of treatment I already felt a lot better.
I almost forgot about some of the problems I had.
Today I have a good perspective,
I will keep on with my life, everything will be all right...
I want to get married within two or three years,
I’ll have my children. I’ll have my own home. I'll take my life.
Vitamin D is essentially produced in the skin,
and becomes biologically active by being transformed into a hormone.
Therefore, vitamin D is more appropriately classified as a pro-hormone.
There are two ways of replenishing vitamin D:
either by ingestion (in liquid form or capsules) or by exposure to sunlight.
There are studies of fundamental importance concerning the vitamin D issue.
One of the pioneers in this matter is Dr. Michael Holick,
who discovered the circulating form of vitamin D suitable
for assessment of vitamin D deficiency – the 25-hydroxyvitamin D3.
Even though we have natural sources for all of the vitamins in general,
vitamins are also chemically synthesized.
Vitamin D is not synthesized in Brazil yet,
Vitamin D synthesized in Italy is considered one of the best, and currently supplies the domestic market.
Updated data indicate that vitamin D deficiency is now a worldwide pandemic.
Because vitamin D is essentially produced by sunlight exposure – which is now quite restricted, specially in
modern urban centers – where people live and work in confined spaces.
Current estimates indicate that approximately 50% of the general population has low levels of vitamin D.
I have been surfing for a quite long time. Surfing has become the major driving force of my life.
You see that, within ten years from the initial manifestations of MS,
most people become handicapped to the point of not being able to deal with their domestic activities.
That being so, what about surfing, a sport demanding strength, balance, physical resistance?
I realized that I had little time left to continue surfing, and that was quite anguishing.
That was indeed the worst feeling -
the feeling from knowing that maybe I would be alive, young,
but unable to surf or practice sports.
The doctor told me to avoid sunlight exposure and physical activity.
Gosh! I wanted to surf, right, dude? But then, how could I possibly do that or even go to the beach?
Then I went to see Dr. Coimbra and he said:
"No, dude. You’ll have a normal life.
Go to the beach, you need sunlight… Vitamin D comes from sunlight.
Go and live your life like a normal person…that is what you are."
These words coming from a specialist
plus the early benefits from this new treatment…
…you get back to live.
Replenishing vitamin D in doses sufficient to achieve these benefits implies
restoring a natural mechanism,
causing these patients to resume a normal life.
It’s a mechanism that nature took millions of years to develop,
and even if the pharmaceutical companies come to spend like four hundred years working on this issue,
they will not get even close to one percent of the benefit that this prohormone can provide to
these patients, returning them to a normal life without the risk of blindness or paraplegia.
I've been working on spreading this idea: let's get sunshine to have vitamin D.
Vitamin D brings an enormous benefit to everyone, and doctors seem to have forgotten
to advise people, for whatever reason,
that vitamin D is a natural resource that enables
the reaction of our organism against a wide range of disorders.
If you take into consideration the lack of undesirable symptoms, wouldn’t it be better
to prescribe it as the first choice?
In my opinion, vitamin D has been the solution available at least for the moment,
there maybe be even better treatments for MS available in the future, but I cannot tell about the future.
It’s healthy, painless and makes sense under the scientific point of view
because it is based on scientific data, and the doses are set according to the results of regular lab tests
with benefits proven by the results of repeated MRIs (resonances) to which I am subjected.
Recent MRIs show improvement when compared with previous scans.
When talking to my brother the other day I was surprised with my own words.
I was talking about a subject that I don’t recall precisely, but I do remember that I said: Ah, in the time that I had multiple sclerosis…
My brother said: “Hey, look at what you just said!”
I was surprised, I caught myself saying that I don't have the disease anymore.
That says it all. I don’t have MS anymore. I feel cured.
And even if I was offered another type of treatment,
I wouldn’t do it, because this one is perfect for me right now.
My life would have been completely different
if I had had access to the treatment based on vitamin D from the onset of multiple sclerosis.
Having gone through all that suffering myself I have become sensitive towards other people's pain
I know this suffering too well.
The sooner people start treatment with vitamin D, the better the results achieved.
What you feel like doing is going around
asking for any patient with multiple sclerosis
to let them know about this treatment.
Once the doctors remain usually silent about the benefits of vitamin D, we feel compelled to tell people about it.
We have the living proof that it works, so we say:
"Go to the doctor, but ask about this subject.
Tell your doctor you would like to try vitamin D"
Your doctor probably will not take the initiative to talk about it, so you have to search for to find more about this.
Inquire about vitamin D because it works, it really does.
Seeing MS patients getting back to a normal life,
young people no longer at risk of going blind or paraplegic – Such experience gives
great satisfaction to the doctor who has them under his/her care. It’s been very gratifying.
These results have been for me a source of great gratification never achieved so far
– even after the passing of so many years of medical practice.
I felt if the doctor had put my life in a small box and
was returning it to me, as someone offering a gift.
Like saying: "Go on with your life. It’s a new beginning".
I can’t even explain the huge difference between the results from both treatments.
I felt like I was dying every day when I was taking the injections commonly prescribed...
..and now I feel alive.
Having suffered from multiple sclerosis for many years,
this is what I have to say to those patients who may be watching:
Wouldn’t be worth trying this new therapy?
Regardless of anything else, try and see what happens.
If you don’t feel any better, dismiss this information and resume therapies currently in use.
However, if you see that it does work well for you, grab your opportunity.
You, young people, who have the chance to reverse the disease, do it.
It is just like I said as it was a joke, but indeed forecasts what may happen in the future:
You may be in the same condition in which I find myself now in a period of thirty years.
That's what may happen if you don't give it a try.
The daily doses of vitamin D should be adjusted individually according to a variety of parameters and,
therefore, the treatment must be carried out under the supervision of a trained physician.
Any hormone taken in doses higher than those individually adjusted and / or without due precautions
may cause adverse reactions, and vitamin D is no exception to this rule.
If not taken with due precautions, doses higher than 10,000 units (IU)
may cause irreversible damage to the kidneys, among other complications.
Some Brazilian physicians have already adopted Dr. Coimbra’s
treatment for autoimmune diseases.
Ask your doctor to get informed about the benefits
of vitamin D as a treatment of autoimmune disorders.
He/She is expected to keep updated on novel therapies in his/her field of expertise.
To my parents.
Tradução e legendas: lucianobc@gmail.com