Man-made environmental toxins include but are not limited to pesticides, dioxin (a highly toxic pollutant), hormone contamination, and plastics. These are labeled as xenoestrogens, chemicals that imitate estrogen (the female hormone). Xenoestrogens enter the cells as do natural hormones, to turn on the production of abnormal proteins. These abnormal proteins trigger autoimmune antibodies, alter the motility of the gastrointestinal tract and cause inflammation. Estrogen receptors (proteins found inside cells that are activated by estrogen) have now been identified to "turn on" Crohn's patients' inflammatory flairs. By interfering with normal bowel absorption and function bacteria from the colon are able to move up into and between the bowel cells, thus having greater toxic effects.
Meet Ben: Ben was an 18-year old patient dying from Crohn's disease. Ben suffered from up to twenty bloody stool per day, weight loss of 130 pounds, fatigue, and ulcerative colitis in his colon. Ben had severely low testosterone for his age. In a last-ditch effort to prevent Ben from having a complete colon resection, Dr. Lichten administered a mixture of anabolic steroid treatment (MAST) to treat Ben's condition. Ben regained 40 pounds of muscle in four months. He eliminated his up to twenty bloody bowel movements in one day. He went down to four bowel movements per day within a matter of two weeks of Dr. Lichten's treatment. When Ben followed Dr. Lichten's program of anabolic medications, he was clinically and endoscopically disease free.
Standard FDA approved Inflammatory Bowel Disease medications reduce only the body's ability to respond to inflammation. They do not increase the production of normal anabolic hormones or reduce the effects of xenoestrogen environmental toxins that compete with androgens to get into the cell through the androgen receptor. While xenoestrogens may be as potent as naturally occurring 17-β estradiol, bio-identical testosterone has 10 times and bio-identical nandrolone had 30 times stronger binding affinity for the receptor than any xenoestrogen.
The unique problem is that these xenoestrogens act like a cancer: they not only interfere with normal production of testosterone but, they tie-up the testosterone from binding to the receptors and they make the body produce unhealthy body proteins. They do this by inducing the liver to increase production of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), that pull the good testosterone away from the cell, allowing xenoestrogen toxins to enter. Lichten discovered that a mixture of anabolic steroids could potentially block the deleterious actions of xenoestrogens and allow the body to heal.
A bio-marker is a measurable indicator of a biological state or condition. Biomarkers are used to see how well the body responds to a treatment for a disease or condition; such as the hemoglobin level in anemia. In inflammatory bowel disease there are signs: bowel pain and findings: bloody diarrhea, frequent bowel movements, weight loss, malaise.
