Dr. David Gersten MD
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CFS Radio Program January 17, 1999
Roger G. Mazlen, M.D. Host with Dr. David Gersten

This week we had two guests on the CFS radio show, Dr. David Gersten and his patient, Greg Bennett who is a veteran of the Gulf War and has Gulf War Syndrome. They discuss the successful use of amino acid therapy in Greg's long road to recovery from the effects of GWS. This show inspires hope that there is a possible was of treating the devastating effects of diseases such as CFS and GWS and shows that improvement may be possible. It also shows the very important effects that amino acids play in our lives.

Dr. Mazlen
Good morning everybody. We're going to be talking to Dr. David Gersten and Greg Bennet in California very shortly. I want to welcome Dr. David Gersten back on the show. He was our guest on February 1st, 1998 and I'm delighted to have him back. I'm delighted to have him back as a guest and also because he's a personal friend and he's brought with him Greg Bennet who'll be on the show. We'll be talking to Greg shortly who is a Gulf War veteran, a member of the 82nd Airborne who'll be telling us what happened to him in the Gulf War and how he got Gulf War Syndrome and David will be talking about treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Gulf War Syndrome specifically. David, welcome to our show. We're so glad to have you back today.

Dr. Gersten
Oh, thank you very much, it's great to be back here.

Dr. Mazlen
And we're delighted because we can talk to you and get an update on some of the things that you're doing. For the listening audience I want to mention that David is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He practices psychiatry and metabolic medicine in Solana Beach, California. He specializes in treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and also more recently Gulf War Syndrome has become a focus for him and if you need to talk to David later on after the show, in the future you can reach him at 1-800-211-5215. David what's going on with this Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Gulf War Syndrome as things are now, as you're doing it today?

Dr. Gersten
Yes, let me update you. Yes, I thought it would be great to come on your show and actually tell you some of the results of what's happening with amino acid therapy. In fact, I think shortly after I was on your show, I offered to treat at no charge as many Gulf War vets as I could possibly handle and the reason I did that was because the results in treating CFS have been so so good, like in the range of 80% of the people have a good response and of those at least 50% are having an excellent response. Because of that I wanted to offer this to the Gulf War vets and when Greg comes on, he knows all the data and statistics.

I believe, right now there's somewhere in the range of 200,000 vets who are on th registry as having some kind of health related problem. That's out of about 700,000 vets, which is over 40% of the vets have something seriously wrong with them. You know, it's time to have that addressed. I believe that Gulf War Syndrome in many ways is quite similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In fact, it may be difficult to tell them apart except, I think you have different pathogens involved. You have pretty much the same amino acid abnormalities with the exception that in terms of your chemical sensitivity, that's showing up higher, and that's represented by the amino acids methionine and cystine. Those will be depleted when you have chemical sensitivity problems.

Dr. Gersten
So, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity or MCS is found in a higher prevalence in vets is what you're saying--veterans of the Gulf War.

Dr. Gersten
Right. I don't have a huge database on that. That is my experience.

Dr. Mazlen
Listen, that's fine. You know, we need all the information we can get on this. Why don't we let Greg come in here and tell us what happened to him at this point in time. Greg, what happened to you after the Gulf War? Were you sick already over there or did you get sick here in the States?

Greg
Actually, I got sick here in the States. When I first got back from the Gulf War after getting back a couple of months I started telling people in my family and people close to me that I just didn't feel quite the same as I used to. I just didn't have the same physical being about myself. I just could never pinpoint exactly what was wrong with me. I just knew something was out of kilter with me and as time went on as the years went by, I just continued getting sicker and sicker and sicker and I tried to stay positive about it. I tried to keep my back to it and not pay too much attention but about two or three years ago, my health just completely collapsed.

Dr. Mazlen
I heard you were bedridden for a year.

Greg
Yes, I was literally down for a year. I had to move out with my wife and move in with my mom and have 24 hours a day care.

Dr. Mazlen
How much weight did you lose, Greg?

Greg
I lost about 38 pounds in about 7 months time without changing my diet much at all.

Dr. Mazlen
That's incredible. What was your exercise tolerance? What could you do?

Greg
Before, in the 82nd Airborne we had a high standard of physical fitness and I carried it on after I got out of the military and I used to run 3 to 5 times a week. I used to lift weights, played on the basketball team. But once this illness hit, you know full steam, I was debilitated. I literally couldn't even walk.

Dr. Mazlen
I understand from Dr. Gersten that he was the 30th doctor that you had seen.

Greg
Yes, I had gotten so sick that I was just reaching and grasping for anybody with any information that I could get. You know I had seen doctor after doctor and spoken with doctor after doctor and tried many approaches, some with a little success, nothing really that got me excited about "maybe there's a chance of me getting back to my health," cause it just wasn't happening. But after getting a hold of Dr. Gersten, things have started changing.

Dr. Mazlen
Well, we're going to go into that after our break, but I wanted to ask you, you did go to Dr. Garth Nicolson and he did diagnose you with some kind of mycoplasma. What did you have?

Greg
He diagnosed me with mycoplasma pneumonia, mycoplasma incognitus and mycoplasma penetrans. So, I have three species of the mycoplasma.

Dr. Mazlen
Wow, you sure have more than your share!

Greg
More than my share and more than I wanted.

Dr. Mazlen
And he put you on antibiotics for it. Are you still on treatment for that?

Greg
I am but I'm trying to get away from it. I've been doing that for about a year and a half and as you can imagine, a year and a half of antibiotics has some side effects. I'm trying to work with Dr. Gersten in more of a natural way to beat this thing.

Dr. Mazlen
Well, I just want to point out to the listening audience that you'll find that the mycoplasma species and mycoplasma fermentans, incognitus and pneumoniae is common also to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients and Dr. Aristo Vodjani recently published a paper showing significant percentage of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients compared to the controls have infections with these organisms and, of course, in Gulf War Syndrome we know from Dr. Nicolson's work, also about this. We're going to talk a lot with both Dr. Gersten and also with Greg right after our break, but I wanted to ask you, Greg, by the time you got to Dr. Gersten what was your mental state. Were you depressed? Were you feeling really down?

Greg
Yes, I was down and depressed. It wasn't like a clinical depression or anything, but I mean I was getting desperate and God sent me the right guy.

Dr. Mazlen
Well listen, we're all thrilled that you're feeling better. Were you on the battle field in Iraq where you were exposed to some of their weaponry?

Greg
Yes, where I was there wasn't much battle but I was on the front lines on the day the ground war started. I charged right into Iraq and spent about 45 days about 150 miles into Iraq and went through all the Iraqi bases in camp and helped demolition a lot of their stuff and a lot of their equipment, so I mean I was right up there in the front and I have to say our chemical alarms were going off nearly daily.

Dr. Mazlen
That's an important observation. And is it also true that the 82nd Airborne had a particularly high incidence of illness after the war.

Greg
Correct. It's really hard to get information, especially out of the 82nd Airborne, but people I've been in contact with back in North Carolina say that everybody they know, a lot of the friends I've spoken to, are ill, that a whole lot of us were ill. Actually we had the highest percentage of illness in the country, I've heard.

Dr. Mazlen
Well, that's a very significant fact and I thank you for relating it to the listening audience.



Break

We're going right back to Dr. David Gersten to tell me what did you do for Greg when you found him like this. Obviously, he was in deep trouble.

Dr. Gersten
First let me say good morning to Greg, also. We haven't greeted each other here yet.

Greg
Good morning doctor.

Dr. Gersten
You know, Greg was tested and he doesn't really know this in terms of the abnormalities, but in terms of his amino acid profile, Greg was deficient in 51% of his amino acids. Pretty significant.

Dr. Mazlen
Very, very significant.

Dr. Gersten
Yes, and the human body is 75% amino acids by dry weight, so when you have that kind of abnormality, you have a pretty severe condition. 70% of the aminos that govern brain metabolism were quite depleted. All the ones governing muscle metabolism, which are your branch chain amino acids plus glutamine, those were all depleted. 100% of the aminos governing sugar metabolism were depleted. Those are glycine, alanine and serine. His GI tract, his immune system, his chemical sensitivity markers, those were all depleted. So, he was put on a pretty extensive program of amino acids plus vitamin and mineral cofactors to support the program, and really the toughest thing with someone with a chronic illness is helping them sustain themselves until the program kicks in. Because it's not an overnight thing for someone who's been chronically ill.

Generally, it's one or two months before you start seeing the positive effects, so the interesting thing with Greg was, even though he started improving, I believe at about 4 weeks into the program, I would say it took months before he would actually believe that something positive was going on. And that's because he had seen these 30 doctors and health care practitioners and there's a big problem when hope and faith and trust start to go down the toilet. Then you have to really act as if you're the first doctor the person's ever met, you've got to hang in there, learn their story, their history, you know everything about them until you have trust established. Trust in the doctor-patient relationship and trust even more so in the treatment modality that you're using. I think that Greg can definitely relate to what I'm talking about here.

Dr. Mazlen
Well, it's certainly obvious that you have the trust. Now, how quickly did he respond to your program?

Dr. Gersten
I think in about one month he started reporting that he was better. His energy was better. And the first thing that he told me that really struckhim was he was at work and there are a number of things that he had not done at work for years I guess, and he spontaneously picked up a heavy box and he just tossed it up into a higher rafter. That's my image of what happened and then after he did that, he just said to himself, "My goodness, I haven't been able to do that in years and years and years." So that first burst started to kick in at about 30 days. And it really has been solidifying over 6 months. It's been pretty much a steady state of improvement with the exception of some relapses of primarily the mycoplasma which has caused. I believe, about two setbacks in this period of about 6 or 7 months.

Dr. Mazlen
But you told me, and I think it's outstanding and I want the audience to know, you said to me that Greg gained approximately 50 pounds of muscle mass.

Dr. Gersten
Yes, Greg why don't you fill in the details there?

Greg
Yes, I even called Dr. Gersten on it. My wife started taking notice that I was literally gaining muscle--she has even claimed that I've gained size from this, you know my arms, legs, everything are just bigger--and as time was going on I started getting more and more . . . bigger, stronger, my arms were getting bigger. I even had friends coming to me who had been through the whole time with me and they were saying, "Well Greg, you're back in the gym lifting weights and stuff again." And I was really in the initial couple of months I was trying to keep it low key, not do much exercise and really I didn't do anything to acquire the muscle that came out with it.

Dr. Mazlen
That's extraordinary, that's a wonderful response. Let me just take a quick question from our listening audience. On line 1 Jeeney has a question on Gulf War Syndrome. Welcome Jeeney. What is your question to our guests on the Gulf War Syndrome?

Jeeney Well, Greg was talking about being on the antibiotic treatment and I wanted to know, being that they are finding the penetrans, pneumoniae and fermentans in CFS people, what are the adverse effects of doing all these antibiotics and if there is something alternatively, what is it?

Dr. Mazlen
OK. David, you want to comment on the antibiotic side effects? I know candida would be a problem.

Dr. Gersten
Yes, sure, that really is a big problem. Greg, he's in a catch-22 here which I'm confident we're going to see the other side of this problem. But with antibiotic use, especially with chronic use, you wipe out your normal bacteria flora, as it's called, in your GI tract, which allows yeast to overgrow and Greg has had pretty serious problems with generalized candidiasis as a result of the chronic antibiotic use. He's been tested through Great Smokies, and he definitely carried the candida. The nice thing about doing the testing is you find out the sensitivities. That is, you find out what will kill the yeast and you put the person on that program, you know, as well as high potency acidophilus products and an anti candida diet which is a tough thing.

It's a very strict diet, no sugars, nothing fermented, no yeast etc. So, Greg has been on that program, I think sometimes it's tough to get at a 100% compliance with that program as it is for anybody to be at 100% with that diet. I think in terms of long term the idea is to build up his immune system as much as we possibly can so eventually he can kill it off. We can get control of the candida through this process and we can look at natural treatment for the mycoplasma and that's definitely an experimentation, but right now, or shortly actually, we're going to be starting with a very high potency colloidal silver.

Dr. Mazlen
That's not something that's been really extensively tested yet, the high potency form. Right?

Dr. Gersten
No, it has not been extensively tested.

Dr. Mazlen
But it offers hope for another way of approach. There are also herbal preparations too, I want to point out that help out with the yeast, like olive leaf preparations and a number of others that have antifungal properties. David, of course, knows a great deal about that. You can reach him, by the way, as I mentioned before and I'll mention again. Dr. Gersten can be reached through the 1-800-211-5215 number. Also Greg Bennet can be reached through his e-mail, if you'd like to discuss his experience with him, gegnjule@pacbell.net, either way, or you can call my office at 516-352-9483 if you're having any problem and we'll supply you with numbers where you can reach either Dr. Gersten or Greg Bennet.

Break

We're back in the Chronic Fatigue chat room with our guest, Dr. David Gersten and Greg Bennet, veteran of the Gulf War. First of all, Greg, I want to thank you for your service to our country. I'm really sorry that you got sick like this as a result of it and for all the others who have the same or similar illnesses. We all owe you a vote of thanks. I want to ask, because I know there is some good news. What is your exercise ability now? You're doing a lot so I want to cheer up the audience and let them know how well you got.

Greg
It's been incredible. As Dr. Gersten said, as time was going on I started feeling better and better and as I learned through this ordeal, I wanted to take things carefully cause I have a way with me, I just want to go headstrong and go fast with something, but I learned, with this I have to take it slow and take my exercise slow, but I decided that I would take up a sport that I could do at my own limit and stop when I want and do at my own limit. I'm so competitive so I started taking up surfing and would just get out in the water a little bit and paddle around and since I've actually gone about the last two months in a row every single week and my strength is getting more and more and actually it was great having told Dr. Gersten, I used to be an avid runner. I'd come home from work and go for a jog every night and since I've become ill, I've missed it terribly and it's been about two years since I've been able to even get out and take a jog and this last week for the first time in two years I actually went out and jogged for a mile straight at a pretty quick pace, came back. I was definitely sore the next day but it was a great thing for me.

Dr. Mazlen
It's a triumph, we're delighted, we're excited for you. And we also have to thank Dr. Gersten too because he's brought you to this point. David, you had mentioned to me, we had spoken before the show, that there's a chronic low level malnutrition in our country that predisposes people to get these types of illnesses. Could you comment on that?

Dr. Gersten
You know, we were talking about why do people have these types of amino acid depletions and why is it so hard to fix. In terms of nutrition in this country, something really terrible is going on because you have an epidemic in my generation right now, the 40's and 50's of people of either exhaustion syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, superimposed now with Gulf War Syndrome. The U.S. government released a document in 1936 which stated that the soil needed to be replenished of its minerals every three years or else it would be fairly worthless. Now that has not happened since '36. So, number 1, the minerals are shot. We're living in an environment polluted on all levels. We live in an electromagnetic field. We breathe toxic air; 20% of the water in this country has been designated as unfit for drinking. So, we're really barraged by an environment and nutrition that is truly not supporting us. We're not getting what we need and so we're predisposed to having some of these chronic conditions. I'm not saying that for Greg's situation, I can't say that. But much more if you look at what's happening across the board, something is going on.

Dr. Mazlen
Indeed it must. You know we're going to have come back and invite you both as guests to reappear on our show to give us an update on what's happening, both with specifically Greg Bennet and also with any other vets that you may be treating. Can you just tell me David, are you still willing to treat some of these veterans of the Gulf War for nothing? Does that still hold?

Dr. Gersten
Yes, that still holds. Can I give out the website so they can just print out the information?

Dr. Mazlen
Certainly.

Dr. Gersten
The web site is http://www.aminoacidpower.com.There's hundreds of pages of on-line information there.

Transcribed by Carolyn Viviani carolynv@inx.net

Permission is given to repost, copy and distribute this transcript as long as my name is not removed from it.

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Aminoacidpower.com from Dr. David Gersten MD, formerly known as Dr. Dennis Gersten.

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