Marshall Protocol
…part 2 of Slowburn Treatment for Chronic Disease
UPDATE: Science-Based Medicine (no relation) has a nice balanced post on the Marshall Protocol in which it is pointed out that it has all the tell-tale trademarks of a sCAM (spurious Complementary and Alternative Medicine):
The Marshall Protocol has all the characteristics of modern alternative therapy: a single discoverer, a hitherto undiscovered biology, an unproven therapeutic intervention and one of the most aggravating issues in sCAM’s: Taking a scientific truth the size of a molehill and transmogrifying it into a Cascade Range of exaggerated disease etiology and treatment. Unlike most SCAM’s, however, as best as I can tell Dr Marshall does not seem to be in the business of making a business from his discovery, although he does have patent applications for his protocol.
The Marshall Protocol was originally designed to treat sarcoidosis, an inflammatory condition, and utilised the drug Benicar, subsequent claims that it could also treat non-inflammatory conditions such as CFS and fibromyalgia, smack of the kind of reaching out for a panacea that is common in efforts to find cures for what conventional medicine considers incurable. Indeed, the list of diseases supposedly caused by L-form bacteria continues to grow and includes the spurious condition, mania.
One of the underlying principles of the Marshall Protocol is that patients must avoid vitamin D. Apparently, the patient’s immune system cannot kill L-form bacteria effectively until vitamin D is eliminated from their diet so they must also avoid sunlight as much as possible.
What we refer to as vitamin D is actually a steroid. Marshall argues that his molecular models show that the precursor form of vitamin D will actually inhibit the vitamin D Receptor and consequently the innate immune system. It is possible that any “feel good” effects are simply a result of L-form bacteria surviving and so no spewing out their toxins when they die. But, none of this has been tested or proven in vitro and certainly not in vivo.
A deficiency of vitamin D has been implicated recently as a causative agent in certain forms of cancer, then a treatment that perhaps reduces vitamin D levels below safe thresholds for long periods may indeed effect a resolution of chronic symptoms of one disease or another, but could concomitantly increase one’s cancer risk. That could be a red herring, however, it is thought that vitamin D will temporarily decrease a patient’s level of inflammation but only in the short-term. In the meantime those L-form bacteria could have a field day, if they actually exist.
There is certainly the feeling that long-term, low-level use of antibiotics among individuals with various non-specific disorders could be storing up real problems for the immune system by allowing low levels of real pathogenic bacteria to evolve resistance. And, that’s not to even mention probiotics, which millions of people imbibe on a daily basis in the belief that they will boost levels of so-called good bacteria.
A paper in the Lancet in February 2007, suggested that prescribing antibiotics in healthy volunteers is a very risky strategy. Macrolide [antibiotic] use is the single most important driver of the emergence of macrolide resistance, the researchers conclude, physicians prescribing antibiotics should take into account the striking ecological side-effects of such antibiotics.
Proponents of the Marshall Protocol point out that it uses carefully selected, extremely low-dose antibiotics. Particularly minocycline, which is used long-term for acne treatment and has not evolved resistance yet. Indeed, minocycline is actually one of the few antibiotics active against MRSA (multiple-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) that has not triggered resistance, although it is only weakly active.
Claims that go against the grain of conventional medicine often take years to filter through, especially if those claims suggest a simple answer to a wide range of illnesses. But, more often than not those claims turn out to be nothing more than a sCAM (spurious complementary alternative medicine). Humans have always sought panaceas, an elixir of life, a cure all for our ills. They don’t, unfortunately, exist. I suspect the Marshall Protocol, with its bizarre claims about naked bacteria and vitamin D will fall at the first hurdle when properly tested.
I too am curious as to why Marshall allegedly holds a patent on his eponymous Protocol.
Back to the introduction.
89 Responses to “Marshall Protocol”
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George,
Does Vitamin D help the immune system or does it just compound the underlying cause of the disease? For instance current pharmacological best practice is to give patients immune suppressants, because the disease causes the immune system to go into overdrive. This in turn causes many symptoms. They don’t have the answers to curing the disease, therefore they take the easy route and disable the one system that is fighting the disease. That’s the immune system. Vitamin D2 is a natural immune suppressive substance. This is why past practice was to give people D2. It blocks the action of the Vitamin D Receptors (VDR) and thus stops D3 from doing its job and the doctor is seen as a life saver because the patient feels better. The problem with this is that D3 starts to build up in the body in fat cells and the liver. Over time the body runs out of space to put the D3. D3 has an affinity for attaching to the T Cell Immune sytem Receptors blocking the action of the T Cells from their job.
This is a domino effect that can affect healthy people if too much D3 is taken. If you take 10,000 IUs of Vitamin D3 a day as some studies are showing, then in just a few month your system will become toxic for all that extra D3.
Taking some vitamin D3 in the winter months is prudent. Maybe a 500 IUs a day, but how much is too little or too much is anyones guess unless you are testing weekly or monthly for excessive D3 levels.
Enter the MP. The MP says that if you have an L-Form Bateria infection, then they produce VDR immune suppressive substances to protect itself. Between them and the immune suppressant D2, they crowd out the D3. D3 builds up in the system over long peiods of time. Eventually D3 goes on to reek havoc with the rest of the immune system. This is all without taking Vitamin D3 suppliments!!!! Now start taking D3 in any amount and you’re just accelerating the process many times over.
This works by placebo effect. Vitamin D has been proven to help the immune system in dozens of studies and this protocol is only antidotal .
Do not get me wrong, I am happy for anyone who gets their health back, but steering healthy people wrong is suspect.
Hi Bill,
Good question, Bill. Is it possible that the treatment was discovered and is producing results before it is actually possible to be proven in vivo?
Nick
Ok, wait…. So I just read the “To D or not to D” article linked on this page. In it was this quote:
“While calcitriol activates the VDR, Marshall’s in silico data demonstrates that calcidiol has the opposite effect.”
I just looked up ‘in silico’, it basically means a computer model. Not even in vitro, or better yet, in vivo!
Can any one of the Marshall protocol folks show me some in vivo data in live human demonstrating that higher 25D levels indeed suppress the immune system… i.e. take baselines before supplementation or extra sun exposure of their 25D, 1,25D and levels of some key antimicrobial peptides or other markers of immune function, and then demonstrate that when 25D levels rise above 20ng/ml that their levels of antimicrobial peptides indeed fall and other measure of immune competence decrease (20ng/ml is their breakpoint for when 25D becomes immunosuppressive).
This would be definitive, and I believe we have the technology to do this RIGHT NOW. Why hasn’t this been done?
Hi David,
Thanks for fishing out the better version of my post yesterday.
Looking back on my comment, I didn’t mean to imply that sick people can not recover by using the MP in it’s current state. I just wanted to stress the that MP is not a quick fix and for those people who have been ill for some time, decreasing bacterial load requires time and patience.
For example, I started the MP with a very serious case of CFS. It took me about four years to really get my life back and I dealt with some really difficult periods of IP. Then again if I hadn’t done the MP, I’d still have been sick during those years and I’d still be sick right now..and for the rest of my life.
However, my Mom started the MP right after a diagnosis of Sjogren’s syndrome, before she had taken any immunosuppressive medications or supplements. Although she experiences IP it is so mild that she can still work out for several hours and day, dances salsa, tango and is able to keep up her pre-MP life with only some harder days here and there. She’s doing very well and has not been on the MP for very long.
So the time scale needed to recover from the MP and the amount of IP one must experience to recover greatly differs from person to person. We cannot guarantee at all that everyone who starts the MP will be able (or willing) to tolerate their IP, although many of our sickest subjects have been able to improve and/or recover.
Of course, I still anticipate that what we now call the MP will evolve over time.
Best,
Amy