MSG Consumption & GAS Theory to Disease

The Blogger’s note: Monosodium glutamate (味精), also known as sodium glutamate and MSG, is a sodium salt of the naturally occurring non-essential amino acid glutamic acid. It is used as a food additive and is commonly marketed as a flavour enhancer.

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The Blogger is privileged to be suggested by Dr J B Lim to post the following article written by him early last month in response to a question “why the billions of Chinese who consume millions of tons of MSG show no adverse effect after so many years” so as to share with interested readers of this blog.

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Thank you for your advice about the ill-effects of MSG.

Nutritionist knew about this long ago. In fact in the late 1960’s I appeared over RTM TV in a programme called ‘SCOPE’ where I described in detail for 60 minutes on behalf of the Institute for Medical Research and the Selangor Consumers Association, the effects of MSG on the human body. There are hundreds of effects. But just to give you one example, is that it causes infant seizures if MSG is added into baby’s food.

The Wonton Syndrome:

Another example in adults is that, it can cause numbness at the back of the neck and a feeling of pressure in the face and upper chest muscles. This was described by Dr Robert Ho Man Kwok, a United States doctor (MD) who gave an account of a collection of symptoms he allegedly experienced after eating Chinese food.
He coined the phrase "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" (CRS) which later was given another name as ‘wonton syndrome’ or ‘wonton soup headache’ to describe these symptoms among others.

Of course it was finally called “Kwok Syndrome” after Physician Kwok who first described it.
Why the billions of Chinese and Oriental races show no bad effect with MSG?
Someone phoned me a day after I wrote about Kwok Syndrome and have it e-mailed to friends. He wanted to know why the billions of Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, who use MSG in their daily cooking, hardly experience Kwok Syndrome or other pharmacological or clinical effects as I quoted in the literature. That was of course a very smart, intelligent and very logical question thrown at me to field. Probably he wanted to corner me?

But, ah! If he has a deep knowledge of Physiology or Medicine he would not have asked that ‘stupid’ question. But since he did not, including sadly my learned nutritionists and doctors who also could not explain, let me very briefly explain and field that question.

General Adaptation Syndrome:

There is a phenomenon we know in physiology or medicine called ‘General Adaptation Syndrome’ or ‘GAS’. This is a condition in which a body response to a stimulus, such as stress (including dietary stress), will react quiet alarmingly to it. The body will respond with either a fight, or a flight reaction. This phrase is what we called the acute reaction or alarm reaction (stage) of a disease. If the stress mechanism is removed, the body will resume normal function once again. But if for any reason the stimulus, irritation, or harmful exposure is not removed immediately, GAS will go into the second stage in the progression of a disease, termed as ‘resistance’ or ‘adaptation’ stage whereby the body will no longer fight the stimulus, example MSG. It will remain silent. In fact they become addicted to it, and may display all the classical ‘withdrawal syndrome’ without the (stress) additives.

The Alarm Stage:

It is at this stage, people, races, or cultures who have never added any MSG into their diet will suddenly experience tightness of the chest, tingling sensation of arms and body when they suddenly go to a Chinese restaurant to eat where they use a lot of MSG in their preparations. This is same response if anyone adds MSG into their food for the first time. They will also feel very thirsty after that due to the sodium in salt and MSG that increase the osmotic pressure of the blood across the semi-permeable brain barrier. The brain controls satiety and thirst.

Here at this stage in general, the body secretes further hormones to increase blood sugar levels to sustain energy and raise blood pressure. The adrenal cortex (outer covering of the adrenal glands) will produce hormones called corticosteroids for this resistance reaction. Although this is still a protective mechanism, overloading this defensive mechanism in this phase will ultimately lead to a chronic disease.

The Body’s Protective Mechanism:

This alarm stage applies almost to all conditions where the body need to react actively to combat a stressful situation, whether it be an unsuitable food, an allergen, a pathogen, a threat to the body, an irritation, smoke, smell, etc. For instance if someone has never smoked a cigarette before and is offered one, he will immediately cough. This is a natural defensive mechanism by the body to reject the smoke by coughing. However, if an individual ignores the defensive symptoms of the cough, the body will be exhausted in attempting to fight the irritation. In which case, the body will sink into the second stage called the silent stage where that protective reflex will no longer be there as the body tries to adapt and to accommodate the irritation which has now become habitual and chronic. Thus he will continue to smoke habitually without much coughing or intolerance to cigarette smoke. In fact the body will accommodate so much that he begins to enjoy smoking instead. This of course is not a good thing when the body begins to ignore harmful irritation into the lungs. Coughing is not a disease, but it is just a symptom. It is just a signal by the body in an attempt to get rid of a foreign irritation within its airways. It is just a signal by the body.

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Thirst as Immediate Response to High Sodium Intake:

Similarly, if a person is not used to eating a lot of salt in his food, and if he is given a dish which is very salty with a lot of sodium (chloride) in it, he will feel very thirsty after all the salt has been absorbed into the blood. This thirst is an alarm that the blood has a very high concentration of sodium in it causing an electrolyte imbalance.

The body then triggers off an alarm of intense thirst. This is the alarm stage urging the body to drink a lot of water to dilute the salt concentration in his blood before it can be excreted out through the kidney. This is just a protective mechanism.

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The Asymptomatic Stage:

It is at this second stage that the body becomes unresponsive to any stress, including toxic stress. MSG is an example. The body becomes unresponsive, and just allows the stimulus (including poison) to continue to threaten and harm. The body becomes asymptomatic, meaning it may not show any symptoms as an alarm. It shows no more signs of an upcoming disease.

This is the same scenario when a person becomes used to smoking. He sinks into the second stage where the body does not respond by coughing anymore. The body remains silent. It becomes asymptomatic (no symptom).

However, if this adaptation phase continues for a prolonged period of time without periods of relaxation and rest such as removing MSG from all foods to counterbalance the stress response, sufferers may either get used to it, or become prone to fatigue, concentration lapses, irritability and lethargy as the effort to sustain arousal slides into a negative (dietary) stress response.

That’s where people get addicted:

This is where all the billions of Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and other races that get used to adding MSG into their daily foods would never experience Kwok Syndrome. Instead, they continue to enjoy foods laced with MSG.

The same as in the above example about a person who has never smoked before would cough vigorously when he inhales the smoke of a cigarette in the alarm or warning stage. But he ignores this symptom, and continues to smoke; the warning signals (coughing) or symptoms will be abolished as the body become tired of the continuous stimulus injuring it. The body gives up with the alarm reaction, and sinks into this asymptomatic (no symptom) stage where it does not want to respond anymore, but allows the body to do what it like. This is not very good, isn’t it?

Third Degenerative Stage:

The third stage of GAS is what we called the exhaustion or degenerative stage. Here, the body runs out of its reserve of body energy and immunity. Mental, physical and emotional resources are heavily compromised. The body sinks into "adrenal exhaustion". The blood sugar levels dips as the adrenals become depleted, leading to a dip in stress tolerance, progressive mental and physical exhaustion, illness, collapse, and shortening of human genetic life-span from 120 years what just half as what we see today. This may be the ultimate effect of dietary additives into the diet of these billions of these people.

This example is the same for a habitual chronic smoker who continues to enjoy smoking for years without developing any more further warning signs and symptoms. He continues to enjoy smoking without realizing its dangers. But after many years, the second silent (asymptomatic) stage will sink further into the last and degenerative stage whereby the smoker begins to show the serious effects on his lungs, heart and blood vessels. He just spirals into this chronic degenerative stage.
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Other examples:

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This body response may be illustrated by hundreds of other examples. Another example is someone who habitually applies perfume on her body but after some time, she cannot smell the perfume on herself anymore. But this is so obvious to someone who went near to her. But for someone who sat next to a lady wearing perfume, after some time even that person could no longer smell it. Both went into a sensory olfactory fatigue with their noses.

Similarly anyone who passes by a bakery shop could smell the fragrance of freshly baked bread and cakes inside, but if you asked the baker or anyone working inside, they could not smell anything at all. In short, the body fails to respond to any stimulus if exposed to it too long.

This principle applies not only to the body’s response to harmful substances ingested, or to stress, but is the gold standard in understanding the aetiology of almost all diseases, especially the chronic, lifestyle and degenerative categories of diseases.

.As back to the question why most people who consume a lot of MSG in their diet do not experience Kwok Syndrome, is because they are used to it. They are slowly poisoned by MSG without realizing it. It is only for those who has never taken MSG in their lives, may suddenly experience thirst, and Kwok Syndrome if excessive salt or MSG is suddenly added in large amounts to their food.
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Put a frog into boiling water:

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This is the same analogy as putting a frog into boiling water. The frog will immediately jump out, but if you put a frog in cold water, and allow the water to a very slow boil, the frog will not jump out. It will slowly be boiled to death without realizing the danger.

Dr Hans Selye:

This GAS Theory on Stress-related Medicine was first put forward by a Canadian Physician Dr. Hans Hugo Bruno Selye along with 8 Nobel Prize Laureates. Dr Selye has published 1,700 research papers, 15 monographs and 7 popular books to his credit. This is quite awesome.
I am just elaborating on his findings in Applied Medicine, and in Applied Nutrition.

A Neurotoxin:

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It was also reported in the literature that MSG caused brain damage even at normal human exposure levels. It is an environmental neuro-toxicology to put it mildly.
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Thanks for re-echoing what we already knew long ago.

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Research Nutritionist Dr jb lim

BSc, PG Dip Nutr, MSc (Food QC)
MD, PhD, FRSPH, FRSM
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The Blogger's remark:

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Hi Doc,

Your illustration of the “General Adaptation Syndrome" or GAS using the examples of perfume and bakery shop is very interesting and that reminds me of Confucius (551 BC—479 BC)'s saying that goes: “入芝兰之室，久而不闻其香；入鲍鱼之肆，久而不闻其臭” which is literally translated as: "staying too long in a room of orchids makes one lose sense of fragrant smell, and staying too long in a market selling abalones makes one lose sense of foul smell”.

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What a similar theory you have cited with the greatest Chinese philosopher more than 2,000 years ago! Nevertheless, Confucius actually attempted to stress the ability of environment to change the character of a person.

(孔子曰:“与善人居，如入芝兰之室，久而不闻其香；与恶人居，如入鲍鱼之肆，久而不闻其臭”。意思是：和道德高尚的人生活在一起，就像进入充满兰花香气的屋子，时间一长，自己本身因为熏陶，也会充满香气，于是就闻不到兰花的香味了；和素质低劣的人生活在一起，就像进了卖鲍鱼的市场，时间一长，连自己都变臭了，也就不觉得鲍鱼是臭的了。说明环境可以改变一个人。”

Thanks again for allowing me to post your great article.

Tai Onn
19/09/2010