My name is Captain David Williams.  (Captain Dave is what the friends
of my grandkids, the other kids who hang around the dock, and my really
close friend call me.  It sorta out of respect, like Uncle or
Grandfather would be.)

Anyway, I started sell licorice as a treatment for Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome and Fibromyalgia several months ago.  The licorice treatment
was developed by Dr. Ricarrdo Baschetti of Italy and first reported
last year in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine.  It was also reported
this year in the Journal of The American Medical Association.  As a
matter of fact, licorice is one of the most researched herbs in the
world.  (I have most of the research if any doctor wants to see it.)

Licorice addresses the adrenal insufficiency that many CFS/FM patients
have.  It works by inhibiting 11-beta hydroxisteriod dehydrogenese and
allows an increase mineralocorticoids and cortisol.

I have had CFS/FM for 20 years and contact Dr. Baschetti and he sent me
some licorice and I took it like he directed and my fatigue disappeared
within 2 hours (it raised my low blood pressure and relieved my
fatigue).  I liked the effect of licorice so much that I decided to
order 500 lbs and sell it at a cheap price to others with my disease so
they could also recover and I could make a few dollars in return.

Most people were and are skeptical and I don't blame them.  I was very
skeptical myself until I tried it. (Dr Baschetti sent me a sample for
free)  By offering a money back deal if it didn't work, and $5.00
specials and whatever, I sold over 500 hundred orders of licorice. 
Half of those who ordered have now re-ordered and I expect more to do
the same.

Anyway, Nurse Camilla has made one attack after another trying to warn
people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and fibromyalgia that taking
licorice would kill them.  She has freighten some of my customers so
badly as to send them into a panic attack.  Her biggest bitch is that
those taking licorice should be under a doctors care because it could
deplete their potassium.  (She refuses to debate me openly, chossing
instead to post her warning every chance she gets.)

Most of my customers are in touch with me almost every week and ask me
for my advice, which I provide ( I have read over 200 research papers
on licorice).  I am send out a newsletter, keeping everybody reminded
of any dangers or changes in protocol.  I also try to get my customers
to involve their doctors.  Not so much because I am worried that
something is going to happen to them but because I want to get the
doctors involved in the treatment so they can see how wonderful
licorice works and prescribe the herb to their other patients with
CFS/FM.  Most of my customers don't have good doctors that understand
their disease and don't want to bother trying to breakin a new doctor,
not to menation the money it would cost them.  So, only a few doctors
have been interested enough to jump on the bandwagon and order free
samples for their other patients.  But I keep trying to get licorice
out in the hands of the sick people who can try it and get well and
maybe the doctors will follow later.

I have even tried to get the famous Dr Nye to investigate the use of
licorice by offering him free samples for all his patients but he
didn't answer me messages.  I understand that he does not believe in
herbs, preferring to believe the recovery I and others claim is either
a fraud or the placebo effect.  I even offer to send Dr. nye lots of
free medical literature but he didn't answer my message so I assume he
don't even want to look at the medical evidence.  What can I do other
than that?

The truth is that Nurse Camilla is right.  Licorice should be
prescribed by a doctor to CFS/FM patients but not for the reasons that
the nurse keeps preaching about. Licorice should be prescribed by a
doctor because some people recover so fast that their lives litterly
turn upside down overnight.  I have one customer who has been living
with her boy friend for 10 years only because she was to sick to get a
good job and move out on her own.  After she started taking licorice
and getting more active her relationship went to hell.  She told me she
didn't think she needed the "asshole" any  more and was all upset over
what she had had to put up with for 10 years.  Other customers who are
getting well are having the same type of personal problems.  Some are
now feeling a strong resentment toward people who told them their
illness was all in their heads.  Getting well too fast it seems is
almost as bad as getting sick too fast.  Of course the final outcome is
different.  Things will get better as we get well.

What is really needed is doctors to get involved and recommend help for
the phsycological problems.  We don't need medical people like Nurse
Camilla who keep scaring patients away from such a fantastic treatment.

The law does not require a prescription to sell licorice, and as long
as doctors continue to ignore this herb as one of the best treatments
for CFS/FM, I will not require a sick person to chase down a
non-believing doctor.  But I do welcome the day when doctors to get
involved with licorice, and, when that day come, I will no longer sell
licorice without a prescription.

In closing, if someone wants to stop me from selling a 3,500 year old
herb without a prescription (a herb that has reported killed only one
old man in written history) then I'd advise them to get their lawyers
togeather and contact the FDA, not me.
 
DW 

PS:  Free samples are available to any doctor treating any type of
chronic fatigue associated with low/normal blood pressure.  Licorice is
not recommended for women who are pregnant, people with hypertension,
and liver or kigney disorders without a doctors approval.  In addition,
a short list of drugs are contraindicted with licorice.  Lots of free
medical literature is available to all doctors.  Send a faxed request
on your letterhead to 954-946-1807.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
alt.med.cfs
Date:1996/05/12 

Fellow sufferers,

According to Dr. Riccardo Baschetti, and Italian physian, licorice can
relieve the fatigue of CFS/FM.  He has been trying to tell the medical
world for over a year now that the fatigue of CFS is caused by an
atypical adrenal insufficiency, but few seem to be listening.

It appears that many who have CFS/FM are low on the important
energy-providing hormone, cortisol.  In the normal person, excess
cortisol is converted to its inactive form, cortisone, by the enzyme,
11-beta-hydroxysteriod-dehydrogenase (11-BOHD).  An ingredient in
licorice inhibits 11-BOHD and allows the active cortisol to increase.

I have had CFS/FM since 1977 and can confirm Dr. Baschetti's theory.
Licorice has eliminated my fatigue.

Every morning, for the last 3 months, I have been enjoying a breakfast
drink of pure non-deglycyrrhinized licorice dissolved in whole milk,
under the direction of Dr. Baschetti.  My fibro pain is reduced
drastically and my energy level is fantastic.  I have even started a
jogging and exercising program and am now up to 4 miles every other day
with no post-exercise crash.

Professor Nancy Klimas, a well-known immunologists and CFS specialists
at the University of Miami, is my primary physian.  She is trying to
document my recovery scientifically and is re-doing all the extensive
blood work she did when she first diagnosed me in 1992.  This should
prove interesting since I had many immune system abnormalities.

Professor Marilyn Cox, a cardiologists at the University of Miami who
is very interested in neurally mediated hypotension in CFS, and who did
my original tilt table test last year, is also documenting my recovery.
She did a new TTT on me a few days ago.  The difference between this
recent test (while taking licorice) and the one done last year was like
day and night.  My blood pressure dropped to 66/32 in the first test
which was stopped 6 minutes into the procedure because I was passing
out.  My blood pressure did not drop lower than 100/50 in the re-test
and I went through the whole procedure feeling fine.

But there was a flaw!  This new test does not prove that licorice
prevents neurally mediated hypotension in CFS/FM because I was taking
other meds which might have interacted with the licorice.  So, the test
results was invalidated.  I am now off everything but licorice and a
new tests has been schedule in 2 weeks.

I feel that licorice is responsible for my recovered energy but I am
not so sure that this herb is responsible for the disappearance of my
fibro pain.  I have a gut feeling that some of my pain relief is from
avoiding gluten.  I have been on a gluten-free diet for the last 4
months and would recommend everyone with fibro try it.  Of course, pain
was never my major complaint, lack of energy is what got to me the
most.  I know pain is the big thing with others.  It always amazes me
when I think of the many different symptoms we all have from what I
believe is the same disease.

Anyway, I will try to keep the group informed.  After twenty years, I
am so grateful to be finally putting this DD behind me.  And, I hope
that my recovery is an encouragement to every long-term sufferer who,
like me, was beginning to believe they the misery would never end.

Captain David Williams
Moby Dick Society, Inc
PO Box 10771
Pompano Beach, FL 33061
Office 954-946-5551
Fax    954-946-1807

davidwms@ix.netcom.com