Let’s be clear up front: this will not cure lupus.

However, it will interrupt the pathology of lupus in such a way as to, as the title says, restore immune regulation—so that your body stops attacking itself, or at the very least, attacks itself significantly less.

What is gluconolactone anyway?

Gluconolactone (also called glucono-δ-lactone) an oxidized derivative of glucose, when glucose is exposed to oxygen and a certain enzyme (glucose oxidase). It’s used in various food-related fermentation processes, and also helps such foods to have a tangy flavor.

It’s also known as E575, showing that E-numbers need not always be scary 🙂

How does it work?

First, a recap on how lupus works: lupus is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks its own tissues, causing inflammation and organ damage (to oversimplify it in very few words).

Next, how lupus is currently treated: mostly with immunosuppressant drugs, which reduce symptoms but have significant side effects, not least of all the fact that your immune system will be suppressed, leaving you vulnerable to infections, cancer, aging, and the like. So, there’s really a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” aspect here (because untreated lupus will run your immune system into the ground with its chronic inflammation, which will also leave you vulnerable to the aforementioned things).

See also: How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation

Now, how gluconolactone works: it increases the number of regulatory T-cells (also called “Tregs” by scientists who don’t want to have to say/write “regulatory T-cells” many times per day), which are the ones that tell the rest of your immune system what not to attack. It also inhibits pro-inflammatory T-helper-cells that are otherwise involved in autoimmune dysfunction.

Where is the science for this?

It’s a shiny new paper that covers three angles:

• In lupus-suffering mouse in vivo studies, it improved Treg function and reduced inflammatory skin rashes
• In human cell culture in vitro studies (with cell cultures from human lupus patients), it bolstered Treg count and improved immune regulation
• In human patient in vivo studies, a gluconolactone cream controlled skin inflammation and improved the clinical and histologic appearance of the skin lesions within 2 weeks

❝These results suggest that gluconolactone could be a targeted treatment option with fewer side effects for autoimmune diseases such as lupus.

Gluconolactone acts like a ‘power food’ for regulatory T cells—a real win-win situation for immune regulation❞

~ Dr. Antonios Kolios

You can find the paper itself here:

Gluconolactone restores immune regulation and alleviates skin inflammation in lupus-prone mice and in patients with cutaneous lupus

Where can I get gluconolactone?

At the moment, this is still in the clinical trials phase, so it’s not something you can get a prescription for yet, alas.

But definitely keep an eye out for it!

We would hypothesize that eating foods fermented with E575 (it’s sometimes used in feta cheese, hence today’s featured image, and it’s also often used as a pickling agent) may well help, but that’s just our hypothesis as it isn’t what was tested in the above studies.

Want to learn more?

In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about lupus, we recommend this very comprehensive book:

The Lupus Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Guide For Patients & Healthcare Providers – by Dr. Donald Thomas et al.*

*The “et al.” are: Jemima Albayda, MD; Divya Angra, MD; Alan N. Baer, MD; Sasha Bernatsky, MD, PhD; George Bertsias, MD, PhD; Ashira D. Blazer, MD; Ian Bruce, MD; Jill Buyon, MD; Yashaar Chaichian, MD; Maria Chou, MD; Sharon Christie, Esq; Angelique N. Collamer, MD; Ashté Collins, MD; Caitlin O. Cruz, MD; Mark M. Cruz, MD; Dana DiRenzo, MD; Jess D. Edison, MD; Titilola Falasinnu, PhD; Andrea Fava, MD; Cheri Frey, MD; Neda F. Gould, PhD; Nishant Gupta, MD; Sarthak Gupta, MD; Sarfaraz Hasni, MD; David Hunt, MD; Mariana J. Kaplan, MD; Alfred Kim, MD; Deborah Lyu Kim, DO; Rukmini Konatalapalli, MD; Fotios Koumpouras, MD; Vasileios C. Kyttaris, MD; Jerik Leung, MPH; Hector A. Medina, MD; Timothy Niewold, MD; Julie Nusbaum, MD; Ginette Okoye, MD; Sarah L. Patterson, MD; Ziv Paz, MD; Darryn Potosky, MD; Rachel C. Robbins, MD; Neha S. Shah, MD; Matthew A. Sherman, MD; Yevgeniy Sheyn, MD; Julia F. Simard, ScD; Jonathan Solomon, MD; Rodger Stitt, MD; George Stojan, MD; Sangeeta Sule, MD; Barbara Taylor, CPPM, CRHC; George Tsokos, MD; Ian Ward, MD; Emma Weeding, MD; Arthur Weinstein, MD; Sean A. Whelton, MD

The reason we mention this is to render it clear that this isn’t one man’s opinions (as happens with many books about certain topics), but rather, a panel of that many doctors all agreeing that this is correct and good, evidence-based, up-to-date (as of the publication of this latest revised edition) information.

Take care!

Surviving Summer

Summer is upon us, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere anyway, and given that nowadays each year tends to be hotter than the one before, on average, it pays to be prepared.

We’ve talked about dealing with the heat before:

Sun, Sea, And Sudden Killers To Avoid

All the above advice stands this summer too, but today we’re going to speak a little extra on not having a “default body”.

For much of medical literature and common health advice, the default body is that of a slim and/or athletic white cis man aged 25–35 with no disabilities.

When it comes to “women’s health”, this is often confined to “the bikini zone” and everything else is commonly treated based on research conducted with men.

Today we’ll be looking at a particular challenge for a wide variety of people, when it comes to heat…

Beating the heat, with fat

If you are fat, and/or have a bit of a tummy, and/or have breasts, this one’s for you.

Fat acts as an insulator, which naturally does no favors in hot weather. Carrying the weight around is also extra exercise, which also becomes a problem in hot weather. Fat people usually sweat more than thin people do, as a result.

Sweat is great for cooling down the body, because it takes heat with it when it evaporates off. However, that only works if it can evaporate off, and it can’t evaporate off if it’s trapped in a skin fold / fat roll.

If you’re fat, you may have plenty of those; if you have a bit of a tummy (if you’re not fat generally, this might be a leftover from pregnancy, or weight loss, or something else; how it got there doesn’t matter for our purposes today), you’ll have at least one under it, and if you have breasts, unless they’re quite small, you’ll have one under each breast, and potentially your cleavage may become an issue too.

Note: if you are perhaps a man who has fat in the place where breasts go, then medically this goes for you too, except that there’s not a societal expectation that you wear bra. Use today’s information as you see fit.

Sweat-wicking hacks

We don’t want sweat to stay in those folds—both because then it’s not doing its cooling-down job, and also, because it can cause a rash, and even yeast infections and/or bacterial infections.

So, we want there to be some barrier there. You could use something like vaseline or baby powder, as to prevent chafing, but fat better (more effective, and less messy) is to have some kind of cloth there that can wick the sweat away.

There are made-for-purpose curved cotton bands that exist, called “tummy liners”; here’s an example product on Amazon, or you could make your own if you’re so inclined. They’re breathable, absorbent, and reduce friction too, making everything a lot more comfortable.

And for breasts? Same deal, there are made-for-purpose cotton bra-liners that exist; here’s an example product on Amazon, or again, you could make your own if you feel so inclined. The important part is that it makes things so much comfortable, because let’s face it: wearing a bra in the summer is not comfortable.

So with these, it can become more comfortable (and the cotton liners are flat, so they’re not visible if one’s wearing a t-shirt or similar-coverage garment). You could go braless, of course, but then you’re back to having sweaty folds, so if you’re doing something other than swimming or lying on your back, you might want something there.

Different hydration rules

“People should drink this much per day” and guess what, those guidelines were based on, drumroll please, not fat people.

Sweating more means needing to hydrate more, and even without breaking a sweat, having a larger body than average (be it muscle, fat, or both) means having more body to hydrate. That’s simple math.

So instead, a good general guideline is half an ounce of water per your weight in pounds, per day:

How much water do I need each day?

Another good general guideline is to simply drink “little and often”, that is to say, always have a (hydrating!) drink on the go.

Take care!