Healing of Rebekah's Immune System

In the winter of 2006, we spent a lot of time praying and caring for a very sick daughter who was hospitalized for IV's on a couple of occasions. It was during this same time period that her immune system was tested and we were strongly encouraged to start her on IVIG treatments to boost her immune system. Even though we had the doctors from the University of Utah, Pocatello Children's Clinic, and John's Hopkins pushing us to start these treatments, we just never felt right about it (please note that we have a lot of respect for all of our doctors and we do realize and understand that they do have our children's best interest in mind). We simply never could feel right about these treatments. Like most desperate parents, we tried everything - from nutrition boosting with a Vita-Mix, to high doses of vitamins, to foot zoning to essential oils. We really felt strongly that we would find a natural answer with fewer side effects and risks.

In 2007, we were introduced to Protandim (a natural supplement) that was invented by a world renowned scientist, Dr. Joe McCord. My friend had a boy, the same age as Benjamin, who had MD. In 2006, the MD Parent's Project paid for a study of Protandim in MD children. They were seeing some very positive results with the use of Protandim and she thought it might be helpful for our twins. I contacted Dr. McCord via e-mail and he indicated that he thought that there was strong rational that Protandim would provide positive results for our A-T children. He also indicated that to his knowledge Protandim had never been used in any A-T children. It is also important to note that Dr. McCord was already familiar with A-T as he had written a paper in 2002 about the rationale for the use of PARP inhibitors to reduce oxidative stress in A-T cells (we looked into using PARP inhibitors also, but where it was unknown what the side effects of turning off the PARP inhibitors would be we chose not to use them.) We were excited about Protandim and its few if any side effects, so we began giving it to our twins.

In March 2010, we returned to the John's Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Maryland for our 3 year check-up. The immunologist there was very upset with us for not starting Bekah on the IVIG treatments. We explained to him that we actually thought that she was getting better and asked him to please test her again. We agreed that if her immune tests came back low again, we would once again consider the treatments. When we received our report back from the A-T clinic in April it stated: “Rebekah's immunologic findings are quite unusual...I do not believe that she needs replacement gamma globulin at this time...”

We recently contacted Dr. McCord to ask him if he believes that Protandim would have helped Bekah's immune system. He felt that it was a possibility as Protandim is scientifically proven to be a powerful NRF2 activator.

You can go to pubmed.gov (the website that the medical community uses to validate medical information) and search for the word Protandim. You can also search A-T and oxidative stress - there are about 200 studies out about how A-T is effected by oxidative stress which is significantly lowered by Protandim. Protandim has been clinically proven to reduce oxidative stress in 100% of the people 100% of the time by 40-70%.