The Trouble with MSG and the Citrus Acids V3

Video 3: Dementia Recovery: The Trouble With MSG and the Citrus Acids

Hello, and welcome to my third video about how our foods and beverages cause or worsen many common diseases. I am Dr. William Emmett Walsh, the author of How I Recovered From Dementia, my 7th book about diet and disease.

In my second video I described how fructose in excess causes many diseases. I briefly touched on the sugar galactose’s worries and introduced a very complicated subject, MSG sensitivity. 

MSG is glutamic acid, an amino acid not locked into protein and dissolved in the blood. Like the other aging chemicals, it is a tiny molecule with a backbone of only five carbon atoms. Our bodies recognize it as a normal body component. It is essential for life, and harmful only when taken in excess. I hope you are starting to see the similarities in all these damaging aging chemicals: tiny molecules, essential for life, damaging in excess, recognized by the body as normal. As the body recognizes it as normal, the body does not attack it. Like the other food chemicals, MSG also tastes great, prompting us to consume way too much of this aging chemical.

MSG forms up to 10% of the amino acid content of our proteins. It also has another use; our nerves use it to communicate with each other. Each nerve is insulated from other nerves like electric cords are insulated from each other. Without this insulation, electric cords would short out; without insulation, nerve cells would quickly short out, and we could not live. 

Our bodies use MSG to move a nerve impulse from one insulated nerve to another insulated nerve. It is a nerve stimulant. Now, imagine what would happen if you flooded the body with this powerful nerve-stimulating chemical. This flood of nerve stimulants would overstimulate and damage nerves. The excess MSG becomes a neurotoxin or nerve poison. These toxins stay in the body for three days before being discharged whole or broken down into harmless fragments. My patients experienced this overstimulation and its severe throbbing pain. It made them suffer horrible headaches. They could avoid this pain by avoiding MSG-loaded foods long enough to allow the nerves to recover from the excess MSG damage.

I suspect that this nerve/MSG damage is today still the leading cause of migraine headaches. Realizing that avoiding excess MSG helped repair the nerves that cause migraine headaches was one of the main reasons I started building a dementia recovery diet. If changing the diet healed the damaged nerves and stopped migraine headaches, wouldn’t it also halt and even reverse the nerve damage in dementia? 

With some additional observations that expanded my knowledge of food sensitivity, I found that the diet reverses dementia. I relied on it to heal my damaged brain. If it failed to do so, I would now be resting underground in a coffin instead of preparing this video. Also, I would not be acknowledging my debt to the wonderful patients who taught me about MSG and prompted me to begin searching for the other components of the dementia diet.

You find MSG in many foods and beverages, including cheese, bread, seasoning, condiments and processed meat. MSG is complicated; in my book, How I Recovered From Dementia, I devoted 27 pages to MSG to help you understand it. 

The following are a few comments on avoiding MSG. 

Read the label before buying. If the label is long and contains many words and some ingredients have strange names—avoid it. 

Be especially cautious of any component on the label named ‘flavoring’.

As for the diseases and conditions that MSG may cause or worsen, I nominate atrial and ventricular tachycardia with their malfunctioning cardiac nerves. Also, as discussed, it causes migraine headaches where nerves are already damaged; and the dementias where nerves are dying. I suspect that stopping MSG overstimulation will help quiet many autoimmune disorders, including MS and lupus. What diseases are not worsened by MSG??? I do not know any that it would not worsen. Avoiding it helps even cancer care.

Sufferers of these conditions I mentioned do not need further nerve damage from MSG overstimulation. The diet I advocate should help these sufferers of many diseases and even save lives like the lives it saves in the dementias.

I will change the subject from MSG to citric acid or, to be more inclusive, the citrus acids, including citric, malic and other acids of the citric acid family, plus the tartaric acid of grapes and wine. They are in tomatoes, berries, grapes, cheeses, citrus beverages, wine, the citrus fruits and juices. As with the other aging chemicals, these acids are tiny, normal in the body, essential for life, and harmful only when taken in excess. I know that other aging chemicals that we have not identified share these characteristics. I will be watching for them.

In my practice, I advised many eczema (also called atopic dermatitis) sufferers to avoid these acidic foods and beverages. This avoidance gave many of my patients great itch relief. I believe that, in many cases, the acid in citrus fruits and drinks being ejected from the body through the skin causes this terribly itchy rash. Therefore, I believe that eczema is an acid burn of the skin relieved by avoiding the citrus acids in so many cases. That might not be so for all of the eczemas, but I believe avoiding these acids will help the skin get better.

 Eczema is not the only condition caused by the citrus acids. They also worsen the lip and mouth cold sores that I and others suffer. A chronic viral infection of the nerves that control the skin of the lips and mouth cause these cold sores. The sores stay small and almost un-noticed except when the sore-sufferer consumes the citrus acids. Then the sore flares into big, red, very noticeable splotches. 

You will find more detail on citrus in my book, How I Recovered From Dementia. 

I have discussed the significant threats in our diet as I know them. In my first video, I told you that our diet is a major cause of disease. It causes or worsens obesity, strokes, diabetes, dementia, heart attacks, migraine headaches, atrial and ventricular tachycardia, autoimmune diseases, and eczema. Our diet is unforgiving, poisonous and destructive.

Thanks for visiting with me today. Please return when I discuss my own dementia. I believe this information will help you better understand dementia.