What does sulfate do besides detoxification?

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,

This is a pretty good summary of what I presented on sulfation years ago.

Rosemary Waring at that point thought the only implication of the sulfate

problems in autism were problems in detoxification and in gut integrity. I

thought there was much more, and spent my years in graduate school trying

to find out what else would change biologically if sulfate got

low. Please, no one copy this post without my permission. I'm very

STRICT about that!!!!

You can see that strategies that compromise sulfation could backfire!

If you want to learn much more about this area, please think about joining

sulfurstories where the archives contain a lot of the

details (and more info on sulfur) that you will see summarized below.

>>Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 23:30:30 -0500

>>

>>Subject: What does sulfate do besides detoxification?

>>

>>,

>>

>>What you have said is true, but there is much more to it than PST

>>issues. I began searching out the function of sulfate about seven years

>>ago after hearing Dr. Waring lecture in England. I was surprised to find

>>her only talking about detoxification, and the lack of sulfation of the

>>mucins that line the gut and protect it from the acids in the gut. She

>>was talking about how proper sulfation may keep the gut from turning into

>>a " leaky gut " which could initiate all sorts of unwelcome things like

>>food allergies and opiate excess problems, and even a vulnerability to

>>intestinal pathogens like candida.

>>

>>I thought the positive changes I saw in my family could not be explained

>>properly by any of the things she mentioned, so at that time, I began to

>>search through the medical and biological literature to see what else

>>sulfate does.

>>

>>Sulfate has to be attached by an enzyme called a sulfotransferase. It

>>cannot attach to something spontaneously. There are many types of

>>sulfotransferases, and they work by recognizing specific shapes and

>>charges in the molecules that they are going to sulfate.

>>

>>I started studying what other sulfotransferases besides PST do. I found

>>out one very critical fact which needs to balance what people are saying

>>about PST on the internet. This is the critical fact: many other

>>sulfotransferases are much MORE effected by sulfate deficiency than the

>>enzyme PST. Why? Because PST can get by with very low sulfate levels

>>before it starts to be inhibited.

>>

>>Some other sulfotransferases are as much as a thousand times more

>>sensitive to a lack of sulfate than PST, but PST function is MUCH easier

>>to measure in the laboratory, and that is why ITS activity has been

>>popularized. Some children may need much more sulfate who have no

>> " PST " ish symptoms at all. Listmates should not use the lists that are on

>>the internet for " PST " problems to decide that their children DON'T have

>>a sulfation problem. Instead, look at how applicable to your own child

>>are the functions I will list below.

>>

>>Actually, so far, it seems that the most critical sulfotransferase for

>>needing sulfate is chondriotin sulfate sulfotransferase, although it has

>>a more complicated " real " name than that. Chondroitin sulfate, after it

>>is changed by these enzymes, will have huge long regions basically

>>covered with sulfate which has been attached covalently at many, many

>>points along its length. Wthout that sulfate, the molecule will lose its

>>function.

>>

>>To give you a feel for how much sulfate we are talking about, these

>>chains of carbohydrate can contain more than a hundred

>>saccharides. Saccharides are particular rings of carbon which can have

>>as many as three of their carbons sulfated on either the carbon or on

>>something else attached to the carbon. If you do your math, you will see

>>that this is a much bigger deal than attaching one sulfate to one

>>molecule that needs detoxification. Many molecules have multiple long

>>chains of carbohydrate that are sulfated. In fact, most cells are

>>literally covered with molecules holding onto these chains like a tree

>>trunk holds onto its branches. The thickness of the canopy this forms at

>>the cell surface is reminiscent of the canopy of branches that form in

>>the rainforest. However, a lot of these chains are also shed from the

>>cell surface under careful regulation. They travel into the immediate

>>environment of the cell, and are sequestered in a highly regulatory

>>region outside the cell called the extracellular matrix.

>>

>>Now I'm getting to the good stuff: the punch line.

>>

>>Chondroitin sulfate with its impressive regions of sulfate is critical

>>for axon guidance, which is a term for describing WHERE the longest

>>extension of a neuron will go. Chondroitin sulfate's close kin dermatan

>>sulfate (which uses the same enzyme) is critical for the formation of

>>dendrites from neurons...these are the smaller extensions from neurons

>>that make connections between neurons. Other similarly sulfated

>>carbohydrate molecules are critical for initiating the signal to form

>>axons in the first place, and induce them to travel as far as from your

>>brain to the tips of your toes. I know my daughter when she was an

>>infant and toddler seemed to have less control over the " far away " parts

>>of her body, like her legs. She couldn't stand up on her legs for the

>>longest time...while children her age were walking and toddling around.

>>

>>Also, chondroitin sulfate in the extracellular matrix forms a sort of

>>canopy around certain types of neurons in a structure called a

>>perineuronal net. The sulfate on those nets regulates ion traffic from

>>the outside of certain neurons. From there, chondroitin sulfate provides

>>something like a volume control for the neuron it surrounds. Lack of this

>>volume control or modulation probably has a LOT to do with sensory

>>defensiveness. These molecules turn over quickly, which I suspect must

>>explain why my father and daughter had such a quick neurological response

>>to their earlier experiences with epsom salts.

>>

>>It is important to know that this type of perineuronal net is also

>>particularly important for interneurons, which are modulatory neurons

>>that help other neurons talk to each other. There are many interneurons

>>in the brain, but this sort of setup is best understood by thinking about

>>the smooth operation of muscles, for instance. A muscle on one side of a

>>bone needs to relax when the muscle on the other side of the bone needs

>>to constrict, in order for you to move your arm smoothly, for

>>instance. The neurons on those different muscles have to talk to each

>>other in order to coordinate this relaxation, constriction and resultant

>>movement. If this communication is not working well, the movement might

>>be jerky, or hard to initiate. But many more obtuse brain functions also

>>use interneurons for coordinating all sorts of messages.

>>

>>In the brain itself, the highly sulfated perineuronal nets are CRITICAL

>>to the function of the vestibular system, the auditory system, the

>>somatosensory system, trunk control, and about five of the cranial

>>nerves, and speech, for starters.

>>

>>Sulfate is also a crticial regulator of the gastrointestinal system. The

>>two main GI hormones, cholecystokinin and gastrin, need to be sulfated to

>>work correctly. They are sulfated by a sulfotransferase called tyrosyl

>>protein sulfotransferase, or TPST.

>>

>>Cholecystokin's sulfation is also critical for something entirely

>>different from gut function: for the production of oxytocin. Oxytocin is

>>the hormone that changes the way your brain processes social

>>signals. Literally, it makes different regions in the brain light up in

>>response to something like a face than it would without oxytocin. This

>>effect of oxytocin is not a " wiring " issue, but is a chemical issue.

>>

>>I suspect as sulfation gets poorer, you will see the SI problems degrade

>>into GI problems and more autism-like symptoms, simply because enzymes

>>that attach sulfate have such a different capability to cope with sulfate

>>deficiency. The ones that need the highest concentration fail first, and

>>those that need a lower concentration fail next.

>>

>>Sulfate also regulates most of your body's hormones by either saving them

>>from degradation, helping in their formation, or turning them off, or

>>saving them for later. Sulfate is also is critical for signalling

>>changes that must occur as growth and development proceed. I really

>>wonder how much lack of sulfate is to blame for the now very obvious

>>earlier puberty that girls are experiencing, for instance.

>>

>>In order to get a feel for the systemic issues, I've been analyzing

>>plasma amino acid profiles from children with autism and a handful of

>>other things like SID (my daughter there, mostly). The overwhelmingly

>>most consistent problem is a lack of cystine, which is the precursor of

>>sulfate. ( " Precursor " means the raw material for making something.)

>>

>>Some organs don't like to take sulfate out of the blood, but they like to

>>make their own sulfate from cystine and its components, which are two

>>cysteine molecules. The type of cell that likes to make its own sulfate

>>wouldn't benefit from epsom salts directly, but it may get more cystine

>>from the blood because sulfate in the blood is adequate, and this may

>>mean the liver will leave more cystine in the blood for other cells to use.

>>

>>Because of this problem of needing more cystine (or cysteine), now I

>>realize that some children may not respond so much to epsom salts alone

>>because what they really need is more cysteine. This is especially

>>important if your child has developed GI symptoms, for the gut needs

>>another molecule to be formed from cystine, and that is

>>glutathione. Lack of glutathione in the gut seems to be involved with

>>inflammatory bowel disease.

>>

>>There is a supplement called N-acetyl cysteine you can buy at the health

>>food store to help supply cysteine. Also, glucosamine sulfate may be yet

>>another way to furnish sulfate to a variety of cell types. There is

>>still much to learn experimentally in this area.

>>

>>To recap, only a very small part of sulfation has to do with

>>detoxification. Mostly, sulfate is a powerful regulator of brain

>>signalling, hormone signalling, the other cell signalling. Sulfate is a

>>critical player in brain function, neurodevelopment, maturity and growth.

>>

>>

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