Article on Edgar Cayce

[bseefelt]

Hi,

I realize this article is very old and the gentleman that wrote it is possibly not even a member of the community any more. I really don’t have any comment on the article itself, just something that the fellow with psoriasis might be interested in. He made this comment in the article -

"His diagnoses were about as well-informed as his suggested cures. For example, we have his reading for psoriasis as, “The conditions that exist through the thinning of the walls of the intestines allow the poisons to find expressions in the lymph circulation; thus producing the irritation to and through the epidermis itself” (The Edgar Cayce Website, ecayce.tripod.com, from reading #2455-2, May 21, 1941). Funny, I have psoriasis and my doctor never mentioned thinning intestinal walls to me–nor do any of the medical websites I’ve consulted. "

You should do a google search for “leaky gut syndrome and psoriasis”. Cayce’s description is actually not far off.

[Czarcasm]

Welcome to the SDMB! For future reference, it is customary to provide a link to the article in question so that we’re all on the same page. Would this be the article you are referring to?

[samclem]

@bseefelt

You should do a google search for “leaky gut syndrome and psoriasis”. Cayce’s description is actually not far off.

David was a pretty bright fellow. Skeptic, but with good science abilities.

Can you link to some of those Google results? It would be great if you could filter them as “peer reviewed” articles as opposed to anecdotal websites.

[Irishman]

Looking up “leaky gut syndrome”, I get from wikipedia

Leaky gut syndrome, or increased intestinal permeability, is a proposed condition of an altered or damaged bowel lining. It is hypothesized to be caused by increased permeability of the gut wall resulting from toxins, poor diet, parasites, infection, or medications. The leaky gut then allows substances such as toxins, microbes, undigested food, waste, or larger than normal macromolecules to leak through an abnormally permeable gut wall. Proponents suggest that these out-of-place substances affect the body directly or initiate an immune reaction.

While physicians, medical researchers, holistic practitioners, and others generally agree that increased permeability of the intestinal lining is a real phenomenon, there is disagreement over whether this “leakiness”, in and of itself, is capable of causing or worsening the diseases in question.

Underlining added.

From WebMD:

“Leaky gut syndrome” is said to have symptoms including bloating, gas, cramps, food sensitivities, and aches and pains. But it’s something of a medical mystery.

“From an MD’s standpoint, it’s a very gray area,” says gastroenterologist Donald Kirby, MD, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. “Physicians don’t know enough about the gut, which is our biggest immune system organ.”

“Leaky gut syndrome” isn’t a diagnosis taught in medical school. Instead, "leaky gut really means you’ve got a diagnosis that still needs to be made,” Kirby says. “You hope that your doctor is a good-enough Sherlock Holmes, but sometimes it is very hard to make a diagnosis.”

“We don’t know a lot but we know that it exists,” says Linda A. Lee, MD, a gastroenterologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Integrative Medicine and Digestive Center. “In the absence of evidence, we don’t know what it means or what therapies can directly address it.”

A possible cause of leaky gut is increased intestinal permeability or intestinal hyperpermeability.

That could happen when tight junctions in the gut, which control what passes through the lining of the small intestine, don’t work properly. That could let substances leak into the bloodstream.

Lots of vague qualifiers, diagnosed by loose symptoms, association with other ailments correlated but no definitive causation.

There seems to be a connection with autoimmune response. Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease. Ergo, the proposed connection.