Addison's disease MISCONCEPTIONS by Charles Douglas Wehner

Again, Addison speaks of a "Semi-comatose state" in his previous work, and now speaks of a "torpid" state (http://wehner.org/cgi-bin/mark.pl/addison/p17.htm?roused ) from which the patient can be roused. This does not disagree with Greenhow's assertion that there is NO coma in Addison's disease, and that often the consciousness is perfect to the last (http://wehner.org/cgi-bin/mark.pl/addison/p17.htm?roused , http://wehner.org/cgi-bin/mark.pl/addison/greenhow able35.htm?consciousness and http://wehner.org/cgi-bin/mark.pl/addison/greenhow able47.htm?consciousness for example).

YOU ARE DAZED, AND JUST TOO TIRED TO SPEAK, BUT YOU ARE AWAKE.

So there is no "Addison crisis" to see.

MISCONCEPTION 3. SALT CRAVING

The Internet is full of stories of people craving salt, by which the condition is said to have been discovered. However, the full documented literature from my website at http://wehner.org/addison.htm shows that there NEVER was any salt craving until steroids arrived on the market in the ninteen-fifties.

Aldosterone drives the salt-digestion.

No aldosterone, no salt hunger.

When aldosterone, or a substitute (FluDROcortisone, known as Florinef) is taken, the body absorbs salt from wherever it can. When it can no longer do so, you crave salt.

Mac E Hadley, in "Endocrinology", 3rd Edition, Prentice-Hall, describes how aldosterone causes sodium to be recovered from the renal tubules, from the gut and from the skin.

SO THOSE WHO CLAIM THAT THEIR ADDISON'S DISEASE BEGAN WITH SALT-CRAVING ARE ACTUALLY THE VICTIMS OF FLORINEF POISONING.

Mistaking FluDROcortisone for a glucocorticoid FlUOROcortisone is a typical cause.

Addison-dog owners may like to put food WITHOUT salt in the bowl of their pet, with a SEPARATE plate of salt beside it. When medicated with Florinef, the dog will take the salt that it needs.

Incidentally, another tip from Greenhow is to use SODA-WATER (fizzy water) as medication. When effervescent water is given to an Addison patient - man or dog - it protects the duodenum from ulcers caused by the sodium loss.

MISCONCEPTION 4. AUTOIMMUNE

The story is put about that Addison sufferers have an AUTOIMMUNE condition. Evidence is often brought in the form of "ATROPHY" of the Adrenal glands.

However, there is a distinction between ATROPHY and APLASIA. The former is just SHRINKAGE (like an emaciated person developing wrinkles - and then fattening up when fed). There is no DAMAGE in atrophy.

Aplasia is the condition that WOULD be found in an autoimmune condition - and this never happens. Autoimmunity means that ANTIBODIES appear that EAT AWAY the glandular tissue, so that it is GONE. Aplasia means WITHOUT TISSUE.

This happens in DOGS - but was never reported in man.

The only way that tissue has ever disappeared from the adrenal glands has been by means of GERMS.

GERMS have the power to adapt to a hostile environment like the adrenals. The high steroid concentrations however, will exclude most types of germ. It has to be tuberculosis, or in AIDS the Cytomegalovirus, or the even rarer Histoplasmosis fungus.

A specialised germ that manages to invade ONE adrenal will be able to invade THE OTHER. Cancer cannot do this (http://wehner.org/cgi-bin/mark.pl/addison/greenhow/p50.htm?cancer ).

BOTH glands must be destroyed for symptoms to appear, because each acts as a reserve gland for the other.

So the vast throngs of Addison sufferers in their self-help groups, and the vast numbers of "experts" who have seen the condition a "thousand times" are plain WRONG.

We must RETURN to Addison and his CO-WORKERS. We must RE-READ the ESTABLISHED LITERATURE, with all its academic links to the Lancet, British Medical Journal, Canstatt's Jahresbericht, Gazette des Hopitaux and others.

Not a single case of steroid addiction clouds the story, and there is not a single case that resembles the auto-immune condition.

All cases in the 19th century were TUBERCULOSIS.

What went wrong? They lost the skill do diagnose.

Regain that skill at http://wehner.org/addison.htm

Collect the books to your own computer from http://wehner.org/wehner.zip (takes just over 8 megabytes).

This is a FREE SERVICE - to set the record straight. You can compare the Wehner retypes with the originals in the British and Wellcome library, or possibly in the Library of Congress.

White pages are EXACTLY as the originals.

Charles Douglas Wehner

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BIO:

Charles Douglas Wehner is an electronics design engineer and technical author who has suffered from Addison's disease for over forty years.

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