The original web site with this page is down so I've copied the information and put it up here on Kyrieology. This is written by Steve Richfield and I do not necessarily agree with all he has written. I do agree that Low Body Temperature contributes to a wide variety of health problems. Now for the Health Disclaimer: The Kyrieology web site is designed for educational purposes only and is not intended to serve as medical advice. The information provided on this site should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. It is not a substitute for professional care. If you have or suspect you may have a health problem, you should consult your health care provider.

Curing Low Body Temperature
and other metabolic control system programming problems
that cause countless "idiopathic" health problems,
with emphasis on Type II Wilson's Syndrome
Copyright © 2002
by Steve Richfield, IEEE #41344714

Introduction

This book is the result of combining Steve Richfield's engineering expertise with Dr. Wilson's extensive medical experience treating people with Type I Wilson's Syndrome, to arrive at an entirely new understanding of low daytime body temperature and other common malfunctions of the metabolic control system. Much of this book is written from Steve Richfield's first-person point of view, as a control systems engineer, as the original designer of Type II Wilson's Syndrome therapyTM, and as the first person ever to actually undergo Type II Wilson's Syndrome therapyTM.

Many have recognized the existence of a "life force" that is stronger in some people than in others, and which wanes as life approaches its end. This was known as "Chi" to the ancient Chinese. We now know this to be body temperature, as 1/4 of the general population has low body temperature along with most of society's health problems, and temperature typically drops as ill health sets in when people grow old. A decade ago, Dr. Denis Wilson showed how younger people with low body temperature could be restored to normal 98.6oF, but these methods didn't work for older people and/or those who had been that way for a very long time.

For centuries, man has treated various complaints regarding the functions of their bodies. However, these invariably have been either chemical (herbs and drugs) or topological (surgery, acupuncture, physical therapy, etc.). However, no effective means have heretofore emerged to treat programming errors in the metabolic control system, where things aren't working right, but there is nothing organically wrong.

Prior treatments for these problems concentrated on overriding errant functioning with large doses of appropriate hormones, or removing organs or parts of organs that are putting out too many hormones.

This book will explain how to reprogram your metabolic control system to perform appropriately, in one decisive stroke without destroying anything or taking any continuing medication. This is a new science that will doubtless grow with time. Note that these new methods work reliably, even on the really "hard cases". With these methods, you can reliably reset even an older person's low body temperature, which has been low since childhood, back up to 98.6oF in just a few hours of treatment, though these patients will have a more difficult recovery period.

There is an extensive glossary near the end of this book, which you should consult in the event that you are having difficulty with a term or concept.

Note that I adopt an engineering viewpoint in these discussions. You must first figure out how something should work before you can set about fixing something that you don't like about it, and even then, the very thing you don't like just might be the thing that is keeping you alive. The real-life cause and effect chains can be very long, and our knowledge of how we work is just now making it possible to understand these cause and effect chains from end to end.

John VonNeuman, the "Father of the (stored program) computer" once noted that the difference between electrical, chemical, and mechanical disappears when the scale becomes small enough. I leverage extensively on this, switching views when appropriate.

A New Paradigm

We grow old, start falling apart, eventually acquire some fatal illness, and then die. Right? Doesn't have to be! Your metabolic control system is capable of working around all sorts of functional problems, yet it sometimes gets "hung up" for various reasons, sometimes avoiding dysfunctional components when they are repaired. A good example is when you learn to chew on one side to avoid a painful tooth. Years after you have gotten your painful tooth fixed, you may still be chewing on the other side of your mouth out of habit. Similarly, you might briefly receive general anesthesia to have your tonsils removed as a child, which your body arguably interprets as something wrong with what it was doing at that time. Of course, you body was just doing its same old 98.6oF thing, so it deals with this near-death experience dropping its temperature to insure THAT never happens again. 98.6oF may be good, but it isn't worth dying for, like almost happened when you had your tonsils out. Decades later, your body temperature is STILL low. People collect these problems until they first learn to avoid living well, then to avoid living poorly, and finally to avoid living at all. As a result of this process, it now appears that most older people with medical problems have low daytime body temperature that is a degree or more low.

Once you learn to undo these erroneous "habits", you can get back to living well in your later years, just like you did when you were younger, rather than just hanging on.

The Current Battle over Health Care

The present US health care system is SO bad that our life expectancy barely exceeds that of many third world countries with few doctors and no health care standards at all. How could this be? In short, our doctors are inadvertently killing people at about the same rate as they are saving them. This comes not as obvious quick deaths, but rather by invisibly stealing the last years of people's lives, often decades in advance. There are other, better, proven approaches, but unfortunately, we have a country of doctors who lack the basic skills to apply these other methods. Utilizing our present doctors with a more effective approach would be much like trying to retrain African witch doctors in our "modern" medical procedures. We are stuck with this outmoded approach to health care and kept there by people who have worked themselves into various positions of power within government, and with the best of ignorant intentions, use their positions to continue this madness. The general population is truly on their own if they are to ever get over whatever ails them, instead of just taking some medicine to suppress the symptoms until something even worse goes dreadfully wrong.

Through a glass, darkly

The metabolic control system appears to be a complex control system that generally follows modern design practice. There is plenty enough known about how the metabolic control systems work that, when you put it all together, it is pretty obvious that complex conditions like atrial fibrillation MUST be the result under a number of erroneous conditions. So why hasn't anyone noticed this before? Very simple, if you don't have any knowledge or experience with complex control system design issues, you wouldn't ever imagine that something as crazy as atrial fibrillation would be such a predictable result. This is not now a part of the curriculum in any medical school.

In a sense, there is really nothing organically wrong. Things are working as designed, only the system has apparently gotten stuck in one of many local optima, where there is no way for you to make any small improvements, except by first making things worse so that you could be a lot better. Consciously and unconsciously people often seek local optima, and are often afraid to try things that might make them worse for a short time, even though there is a good chance that it could make them a lot better for a long time.

Hundreds of millions of years of evolution has produced some really elegant solutions, like atrial fibrillation, to some difficult design problems, like how to keep you alive and functional when your own metabolic control system becomes unstable. Just how do we keep from producing blood pressure spikes and dips without completely ignoring erroneous signals when the control system becomes unstable? I see no better possible way than atrial fibrillation. Far from wanting to "cure" atrial fibrillation, it is really hard to complain about something that works so well. Instead, it is much better to cure the metabolic control system instabilities, and leave the atrial fibrillation to go away on its own.

The new paradigm is to stop looking at metabolic control system conditions like low daytime body temperature, atrial fibrillation, and insulin resistant diabetes as some sort of disease. Look to understand why they actually SHOULD be happening when there is really nothing organically wrong, then how to retrain yourself to stop doing that without causing other, even worse problems.

Hence, this really becomes an engineering exercise in a medical setting. It is much easier to train an engineer to apply control systems engineering skills to fixing metabolic control systems, than it is to train a doctor to have the control systems engineering skills needed to fix anything as complex as a metabolic control system. People are often easier to work on than HVAC control systems or oil refineries are, because people are self-adjusting. All you need do is to briefly force somewhat the sort of operation that you wish, and if it really works better than your body does now, then your body will automatically change.

Curiously, control system engineering has just recently caught up with evolution, so that you and the most advanced computerized control systems utilize pretty much the same methods. Hence, this knowledge is readily transferable between disciplines to the benefit of both, and such information now regularly goes both ways.

Steve's story

I had always been pretty sickly and never athletic, and entered adulthood with a long list of minor medical complaints including allergies and asthma. As years passed, I learned to deal with most of my problems, but every few years I had some sort of major setback. One of my largest setbacks came in 1990, when I developed severe angina pain, and my doctor and longtime friend recommended that I cancel my magazine subscriptions because my arteries were probably clogged up past the point of reasonable medical intervention. Some quick medical research failed to yield any "cure", but it did yield some wild theories from several authors:

* Eating enough fiber might be able to flush enough of the fat out to stay alive.
* Eating enough vegetable oil might be able to suspend the fat long enough to flush it out.
* Eating enough potassium might help.

I was considering what little I had to base any hope of a future on, then it dawned on me - this was a great recipe for popcorn. I immediately started eating 3 meals a day of popcorn made with corn oil and "lite" salt. After a month my symptoms were nearly gone, so that only when I made a "mistake" would I get my angina. I discovered that it took 3 egg yolks or a bowl of chile with LOTS of animal fat to cause a problem. Then in another month, I was cured, or so I thought. A few months later, I started developing insulin resistant diabetes.

Back to the medical library. I found that this was a normal result of too much polyunsaturated oil and too little vitamin B6, so I switched to peanut oil and started taking B vitamin supplements, and my diabetic problem gradually disappeared over the next several years.

Then at the beginning of 2001, I developed idiopathic (no apparent cause) atrial fibrillation (an occasional very rapid heart rate, though it is somewhat more complicated than this). I now had the Internet, so I spent many days researching this condition - but it had no cure, nor even an effective treatment! I read everything I could find on just how the heart works and finally noticed that EVERY input to the heart came directly or indirectly from my hypothalamus, the part of my brain that controls metabolism. This had all the markings of a control system problem.

I joined an atrial fibrillation forum , and learned that there are various forms of atrial fibrillation, and my particular form included constipation and a bloated tummy - I looked rather pregnant. Further, my tummy was SO tight that I was concerned about possibly developing a hernia as a result, as my father did when he was a little older then I was. Since many competent people were already working the obvious problem of atrial fibrillation, I figured that the best way would be to approach the problem from some different direction, so I decided to get to the bottom of my bloated tummy. My digestive system is controlled by my vagus nerve, which works to inhibit operation. Clearly, this must be in overdrive, but this also slows down my heart, and my heart was NEVER running too slow. Perhaps something else was pushing my heart rate up to normal, but what?

The only two things that I could find that might be trying to push my heart rate up were my cardiac nerve and adrenaline. When not in fibrillation, my heart rate was very regular, whereas excessive cardiac nerve activity results in irregular heartbeats. Hence, I concluded that I must be in adrenaline overdrive, but why?

I posted what I knew on and Sara Avery responded, explaining that adrenaline was used to increase body temperature. Further, some people who were stuck at low body temperature used excessive amounts of adrenaline just to keep going in "sleep mode", and that I should investigate "Wilson's Syndrome" at .

I joined the Wilson's Syndrome forum and ordered the literature package from the Wilson's Syndrome organization and read it. This literature explained that clogged arteries and insulin resistant diabetes can be caused by low body temperature. It dawned on me that my former treatment for former problems really just bought me some time, and that my low temperature could explain ALL of my past and present problems. This was IT, except for one "little" problem. The treatment doesn't work if you have had Wilson's Syndrome for decades, and I had probably had it for 50 years. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered what my problems were, that there was a quick and easy cure for it, but that I was just a few decades too late for it to work on me. I pushed my temperature up a bit with thyroid hormones and my atrial fibrillation stopped, only to return even more strongly for a while when the hormones wore off. So close, and yet so far.

My research project then became a search for understanding as to just WHY Wilson's Syndrome treatment failed to work on people like me. In reading Dr. Wilson's writings, I started to question whether this was a hormone problem at all, but rather a control system problem that just happens to respond to the treatment that Dr. Wilson was using. Then came the "clincher". I talked to Dr. Eric Gordon , who had been testing his patients for rT3, the stuff that Dr. Wilson's literature stated must be in excess, only to find that the rT3 level of his low temperature patients was normal.

As luck would have it, a decade earlier I presented a paper at the First International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, explaining how an individual neuron could be instantly reprogrammed. Given the knowledge to reprogram neurons, the challenge was to design a procedure to fix my control system problem, and Dr. Wilson's apparently accidental success was a BIG clue as to how to go about this. In simple terms, neurons look for "interesting" things that other neurons have missed, so making a radically new situation demands the attention of every neuron that isn't already doing something even more important. The main problem with Dr. Wilson's approach when treating a control system problem was that he tried to do it so slowly, creeping up on an adequate dosage over days or weeks, rather than doing the job as quickly as possible, like in hours. The prevailing opinion was that the "conservative" approach was best to go slowly, when this was fraught with problems and risks when treating a control system problem. It takes a rapid change to present a radically new situation to the neurons involved, and once presented, it won't continue to be radically new for very long.

After about 3 weeks of full time research, I ran out of things to study, and it was finally time to make a decision: Do I try the best untested treatment that I can design, or not? I was unemployable with my atrial fibrillation, and by now I had been out of work for 5 months and I was flat broke with two kids to feed. This was a really simple decision to make - I decided to do it. I was MOTIVATED. I took a 5-mcg Cytomel pill, put my Alaskan parka on, and went to bed for the night.

The next morning I took another 5-mcg Cytomel, and other around noon, and another that afternoon, then my temperature popped up to 99.something. This held for several hours, gradually creeping down to 98.6oF. After several hours I "crashed", and was soon shivering under an electric blanket in an 80oF room with my parka on. Having anticipated this, I took half of a 25-mcg Levoxyl pill, and in 45 minutes I felt fine again for a couple more hours, just as Dr. Wilson's literature had said to expect, and finally I went to bed, exhausted, around midnight.

The next morning I drank a LOT of espresso, put a thermometer in my mouth, and took a LONG hot shower, until I was finally able to get my temperature up to 98.6oF again. It only stayed up for a couple of hours. The next morning I repeated this, and it stayed up a little longer. However, on the third morning, I couldn't get it to come up at all (which Dr. Wilson's literature also said might happen due to what he calls "compensation"). I took another 5-mcg Cytomel and went back to the hot shower after the water heater recovered, and it finally came up again.

On a couple of mornings my temp dropped just after my shower. I finally realized that when I used the shower to raise my temperature more than 1oF, that it would often drop right back down. Hence, I learned to drink hot liquids and wait a while before jumping into the shower.

As the following weeks and months passed, I tapered down to a couple of shots of espresso and started skipping my morning shower, especially on warmer days.

A month after I reset my temperature to 98.6oF, I got a highly paying project, BUT it required a grueling 11 hours per day of work, plus commute. This from me - just out of nearly complete disability. My temperature dropped halfway through the first day, but stayed up on subsequent days, and in no time I was solvent again. Not only had I cured my atrial fibrillation, but now I was BETTER than I had EVER been. Even the scales on my very dry and scaly skin, that I had all of my life, had fallen off within a week, exposing normal skin. Further, I now only need 6-7 hours of sleep each night, whereas before I needed 9-10 hours, giving me another 3 full hours every day at a MUCH higher energy level.

However, along the way I had learned some REALLY disturbing things. A quarter of the population had low daytime body temperature, most of whom have had their tonsils removed. Further, half of the people going to the doctor have low temps, as do nearly all of those who go to doctors who specialize in aging.

Several of my friends and family had recently died - all in retrospect with obvious symptoms of low body temperature that I now recognized. I quickly called all of my sick friends, and discovered that they were ALL missing their tonsils and had low body temperatures. Some, including my own parents, discussed this with their doctors, who said that this was quackery, and based on their doctor's advice, dismissed what I was saying as ridiculous. As a result, both of my parents were dead within months.

Others were at the "dead chicken stage" where, if someone told them that wearing a dead chicken around their necks would help, that they would surely go and secure a dead chicken. I started first educating them, then resetting them, often with spectacular results.

Dan , a neighbor, had a failing heart bypass and uncontrollable insulin resistant diabetes, despite the use of three different medications. He was unable to work, was not expected to live much longer, and his wife and daughter had just left him to find a better provider. He had been recently arrested for DWI, when his only intoxication was his diabetes. One day, Dan applied my methods and reset his daytime body temperature back up to 98.6oF. In only 6 weeks he was completely back to normal, and even had a completely normal HgA1c test, as though he had never had diabetes! Dan resumed work as an electrician, working in freezing winter environments that were even difficult for healthy young people to work in. A good expert witness got him off of the DWI charge. Dan reported in an email seven months after correcting his temperature:

"My waking temp is consistently 98.6 degrees. My blood sugars are 65-85 first thing in the morning, and 120-160 through the day. I eat what I want and include a few sweets each week. My BP is steadily 135/65 and I drink coffee and tea daily. I add no salt, but don't avoid what the manufacturers put in. This is as it became soon after recapturing my correct body temperature with your help."

To test this apparent causal relationship with diabetes, I called an anti-aging doctor friend of mine and asked him if he had any patients who had insulin resistant diabetes AND normal body temperature. His reply: "Steve, nearly all of my patients have low body temperature!" It appears that normal body temperature is pretty rare among the older set - so rare that it is hard to make any broad statements about them, or even use them as control groups for statistical purposes!

Mental effects of raising daytime body temperatures

Like many people in their 50s, I wasn't as quick as I was half a life earlier. I had a longer attention span, but I needed it to get to the bottom of things. After resetting my daytime body temperature back up to 98.6oF, I feel that I am more brilliant than I have EVER been and make fewer mistakes, but at the cost of some attention span and tolerance for uninteresting detail. Before, I would have patiently analyzed and untied the Gordian Knot, whereas now I would simply cut it in half.

The objections I have heard from others regarding resetting their temperatures back up to 98.6oF center around this issue of attention span. There are a number of occupations that require VERY long attention spans, such as legal assistance, that you may have taken up because it suited you AT LOW DAYTIME BODY TEMPERATURE. You might be locked into an occupation that ill suits you once you reset your temperature, and so must choose to change temperatures and occupations, or leave things as they are. Most people would gladly trade some of their long attention span for another ~20 IQ points.

I make fewer random errors at 98.6oF. For example, in playing the Windows 98 game of Minesweeper, I cannot win at the expert level in the morning when I am still at low temp, because I invariably make too many random mistakes to ever reach the end of the game. However, as soon as my temperature pops up to 98.6oF, I can consistently play this game to its conclusion without making ANY mistakes.

Dr. Wilson has noted that raising daytime body temperatures often causes a dramatic improvement in cases of depression. Indeed, many psychiatrists now also prescribe Cytomel when they prescribe antidepressants, to raise their patient's temperatures a little to also raise their spirits. Of course, if they just raised their patient's temperatures all the way to 98.6oF, then they probably wouldn't even need the antidepressants.

I now wake up every morning with level-2 brain fog, i.e. I feel like I would during the day if I had two alcoholic drinks. When I wake up I have but one goal - to get my temperature up to 98.6oF and thereby eliminate my brain fog, which usually takes about an hour. Sometimes I think about how I was before I reset my temperature - in my morning brain fog ALL OF THE TIME. Despite an excellent driving record during my half century at low temp, now the thought of driving a car at low temp seems pretty scary to me. The only driving I now do at low temp is just to get to the nearest espresso stand.

In short, the effects of being low temp are very similar to the effects of at least one alcoholic drink, and considerably more when my temperature didn't make it up to a high 97.something. This may not be 100% bad (after all, some people do intentionally drink the stuff), but I really don't need or want this all of the time. The big point here is that like most low-temp people, I was COMPLETELY clueless as to just how "drunk" I always was. This is a little like continuously drinking "spiked" punch without realizing it, or sipping on beer all day long.

Dr. Wilson, who has much more experience treating low temp people than I do, says that the most common comments he hears are something like "I had no clue just how bad off I really was".

Path of the cause and effect chain - from external,
through control systems, then through organs,
then looping back through control systems and organs,
to finally cause a complaint

ALL disease starts with some external cause. Even random genetic disease can start with a cosmic ray that damages a sperm or egg. Nobody is perfect, so we have a VERY capable control system that can compensate for almost anything including missing organs or body parts. However, your goals and the goals of your metabolic control system can be somewhat different. You want to live as well as possible, whereas your metabolic control system just wants you to live and reproduce as many times as possible. Hence, your metabolic control system is often content to leave things as they are, rather than looking for a better way to work.

Then something happens. You were just going through life, then suddenly you almost died! You knew that you were getting your tonsils removed, which required anesthetic gas. What you didn't know was that your metabolic control system would presume that IT did something VERY wrong, and it would be VERY careful to never EVER do THAT again. What was THAT? Just the same old thing, going through life at 98.6oF. In short, you will NEVER be normal again. Of course, your doctor dismisses your lower temperature as being perfectly normal, since this is what happens to all of his patients, and he sends you home as cured of your tonsillitis, without ever telling you that you just lost the last 20-30 years of your life.

Your chronic lower temperature means that you will need more adrenaline to get through the day, which depending on what your particular strong and weak points are, eventually results in any of a wide variety of "diseases".

Understanding what is happening right now in your own particular body

For any modification of your metabolic control system to succeed, you must be able to put all of your metabolic processes somewhere near their midrange, and be able to recognize when something gets too near its limits and before you get sick as a result. So far, the best way that I have found is to first teach people how their essential systems interact, then get them to take their temperature several times a day after first guessing what it will be, and then speculate on why they were a little off. After a while, most people can pretty consistently guess their temperature within about 0.2oF, indicating that they are now sufficiently in touch with their bodies to proceed. Sometimes my guess is a degree off, because a given set of symptoms can sometimes be explained by two completely different situations at two different temperatures. Indeed, the usual reason that I still sometimes take my temperature is to differentiate between such situations. A common example: In the morning I might feel warm and hence know that I am above my set point, but which one? I could be at 98.0oF, and hence won't have serious brain fog even though I am still in my nighttime temperature range, or I could be at 99.0oF and be a little above my daytime set point. I start to think whether I have had any brief chills that might signal that I have jumped up to my daytime temp? Have my bowels jumped into action yet? Maybe I was startled awake that morning, so of course my bowels aren't going to work right. I have noticed that the moles on my face feel warm when I am above 98.6oF. I consider these subtle clues and make my guess, but sometimes I am wrong.

There are simple ways of tracking the operation of various systems beyond those that control body temperature. You defecate when your vagal system in inactive, so if you are perpetually constipated, you can presume that your vagal system is ALWAYS pretty active. If you have no schedule and defecate small amounts several times a day, then your vagal system is probably pretty much shut down.

You dump adrenaline to jump out of bed in the morning and to stay warm. When you run out, your temperature usually drops and you feel VERY tired. When your adrenaline levels go up, your vagal system must usually also gear up to keep your heart from racing - unless of course you are fighting for your life. By considering how warm you have been for the last day, when you have defecated, and when you crash, you can infer your adrenal levels and predict when you will run out and crash again.

For example: You just reset your temperature a month ago. You wake up suddenly for some minor emergency and noticed that you had accidentally kicked the covers off that night. Hence, you have been using the adrenaline that you made last night just to keep warm while you are sleeping rather than storing it for the next day, and you dumped what little adrenaline you had left to jump out and deal with your minor emergency. To have some chance of getting through the day, you put lots of warm clothing on, but still you get some chills. You quickly jump into a hot shower with a thermometer in your mouth, and "cook" there until you get up to 99oF, then get out and jump back into your winter clothing. You decide to skip your morning coffee and save it for when you actually start to crash, which comes a little later in the morning, just as you expected. You then go to your local coffee shop and get a large, extra-hot, 3-shot latte, and drink it down as quickly as you can, and you can feel a slight chill for a minute as your set point pops back up to 98.6oF faster than your temperature can follow. You know that this will only last for 6 hours - just long enough to leave work on time and get home. When you do finally get home, you are starting to crash again, so you go to bed early, but this time with your blankets securely in place so they don't fall off again. This shows how you can interact with your body to get through a really difficult day.

Before you had read this book or reset your temperature, things would have gone quite differently. You would have crashed just after arriving at work, and have had to decide whether to somehow drag through the day, go back home sick and risk driving while half dead, hide in some corner and sleep on the job, etc. Further, you would have blamed all of your problems on just getting old or waking up badly, rather than understanding what actually happened.

The basic biological theory of the inherent advantages
of warm-blooded animals over cold-blooded ones
by Steven Wm. Fowkes

This theory is that the energetic cost of maintaining a uniform temperature is offset by enzyme efficiencies, which translate into physical advantages like speed of movement and superior strength. The fact that enzyme activity is temperature dependent is not a theory, but fact. All enzymes exhibit this temperature dependence. However, it is not equivalent for all enzymes, even in warm-blooded creatures. Some enzymes are more temperature-sensitive and others are less temperature-sensitive. This is a good thing. Human fingers, for example, can function well at a very wide range of temperatures. However, the human liver requires very stable temperatures to operate efficiently.

I suspect that this variability in temperature sensitivity can allow some pretty sophisticated temperature-adaptation mechanisms to exist. The relative dominance of a more temperature-sensitive system and a less temperature-dominant system can be used to create very acute temperature responsive systems. And since the enzyme efficiency curve is an inverted U shape, the relative dominance of a enzyme at the upper side of the curve compared to an enzyme at the lower side of the curve would be spectacular. In other words, temperature decreases can increase the activity of enzymes that are operating at temperatures above their optimum temperature range, while simultaneously decreasing the activity of another enzyme that is operating below its optimum temperature.

The trick is to show that only one, two or three degrees Fahrenheit produce a significant suppression of overall enzymatic activity in metabolically important ways. I suspect that it is much more likely that such temperature sensitivities indirectly influence metabolism through regulatory (homeostatic) systems that are optimized for temperature sensitivity and alter metabolism through specific temperature-sensitive feedback control systems.

There is certainly a temperature component to the biphasic circadian rhythm. During the day, catabolic metabolism dominates; body temperature is higher, and acidic waste products are dominant. At night, while presumably sleeping, body temperature drops, anabolic metabolism dominates, and alkaline waste products are dominant. If we accept that these systems are coincident, then there could easily be interactions between pH-sensing systems and temperature-sensing systems, and even reactions between neurological mechanisms and temperature-responsive ones. I see a big chicken-and-egg problem. Trying to sort out coincident systems is fundamentally difficult.

But it is clear that disruptions of any of these coincident systems can produce pathological processes. There are probably examples of each and every one. However, it is also possible that the cause-and-effect mechanism, that may have been presumed to be through one particular cause, might be due to corresponding changes in some other coincident process, that the researcher or clinician is not monitoring. For example, if sleep disruption causes temperature disruption, and temperature disruption causes cognitive impairment, then sleep disruption may not be directly causing cognitive impairment.

The difference between temperature and metabolism

There is a common myth that higher temperature means higher metabolism. You metabolism is the measure of your fuel consumption. The energy in your food comes out in three forms:

* Mechanical energy in the work you do. If you are working hard at comfortable ambient temperatures, then the majority of your output will be in the form of mechanical energy.

* Heat energy as the heat you LOSE. If you are sedentary, then the majority of your output will be in the form of heat loss.

* Chemical energy as undigested food.

If the ambient temperature is 30oF lower than your body temperature, then increasing your temperature by 1oF will only increase your metabolic heat loss by 3%. However, switching from light short-sleeved to heavier long-sleeved shirts can easily reduce your heat loss by 20% or more. Hence, metabolism is much more affected by what you decide to wear than by your body temperature.

People with low body temperatures must often avoid dressing warmly, because they both keep themselves going and keep themselves warm with adrenaline. If they warm themselves up by other means such as warm clothing, then they shut down their adrenaline supply and crash into chronic fatigue. However, once their body temperature has been reset back up to 98.6oF, they have no problem dressing warmly, because they can keep going just fine at 98.6oF without adrenaline.

Since there is a strong experimental link between lower metabolism and longer life span, people with low daytime body temperatures should live longer by resetting their temperature back up to 98.6oF if needed, and dressing as warmly as is comfortable for the remainder of their lives.

But the first thing that happens in famines is that people's temperatures drop. This is because these people typically don't know enough to put on enough extra clothing when food is in short supply, so their metabolic control systems drop their temperatures to conserve energy. However, had they had SO much clothing on that it was difficult for their metabolic control system to drop temperatures and still maintain in "closed loop" operation, then they would have remained at 98.6oF. This while consuming even less energy than others at lower temperatures - to survive famines even better than those who dropped their temperatures.

There are two important lessons here:

* To live longer, make sure you remain at 98.6oF and wear lots of clothing.

* To survive famine, wear lots of clothing, as verified by your remaining at 98.6oF during the day.

My 80:16:3:1 rule

My "day job" is repairing hypercomplex computer-based systems, usually where others have previously failed. Often the first thing I see is an expert's report explaining why it is impossible or unfeasible to repair. There are some simple rules that seem to characterize such repairs, which seem to apply equally to repairing real-life medical problems:

* Don't waste your time trying to fix anything until the Engineering Change Orders (ECOs) have been installed. The medical equivalents to this are the ubiquitous problems shared by most people, such as
* hydration, mercury poisoning, parasites, and low body temperature here in the US. This fixes about half of all problems. Fixing two thirds of the really serious things that you find that are wrong won't make any difference at all.
* When you do finally fix something that makes a difference, it fixes 80% of your problems, leaving you to start over with a problem that is now only 20% as bad.
* This continues, so fixing about 6 real problems gets you to the 96% point, and fixing about 9 real problems gets you to the 99% point.

First you fix 80% of your problems, then you fix another 16% of your problems, then you fix another 3% of your problems, and then you fix most of the remaining 1% of your problems.

Hence, it is foolish to look for THE problem. All real-life diseases are the result of the intersection of several problems. The best that you can ever hope for is to find enough of them to reduce your problems to an insignificant level.

Why no doctor can do this

Unfortunately, there are no useful "lab" tests for the many conditions that you need to observe. Further, you typically need to take action RIGHT NOW, and not hours or days from now. Hence, unless you happen to be married to a doctor, you are pretty much on your own.

Sure, a clinical setting might be good for the one day of medication that is sometimes needed, but decisions must be made on short notice every day for the following several months, and who wants to live in a clinic?

A health club with a sauna or jacuzzi is really nice to force temperatures up, both during the day of resetting, and in the early morning for weeks following resetting.

I think that a retreat is probably the best answer, where patients can first spend several days in classes learning all about their metabolism and how to accurately guess their temperature. Then they would get their temperatures reset, work out a daily routine that works for them while they recover from the change, and finally go home in a long-term stable condition. A support group would give everyone a chance to exchange notes, and for patients who had been reset longer to help those who had just been reset. Any issues that the "old timers" couldn't handle would be referred back to the medical personnel.

There are multiple workable control system strategies

That your metabolic control system has found a way to operate that you dislike certainly shows that there is more than one way to work. My daughter had lots of problems because she was spending her winters at low body temperature and her summers at high body temperature - a perverse method of operation that isn't nearly as dangerous as always being stuck at the same temperature.

My daughter's approach was to start take sublingual melatonin supplements before going to bed, to force her temperature to cycle daily. Then, she started exercising more and sleeping with fewer covers to reduce her dependence on melatonin. As of this writing, she is now in the later stages of tapering off of the melatonin.

My goal was to reset my temperature and metabolism to support the relatively sedentary lifestyle of an engineer, whereas my neighbor Dan needed to work hard in a freezing environment. Hence, Dan did things a little differently, taking two doses of T2 each day to keep his metabolism up high enough to keep warm without needing to dump adrenaline.

What is "normal"? What is "optimal"?

Sometimes a doctor tests Olympic athletes to see what their metabolism is doing, but they are usually looking for training clues rather than how to treat people in their second half-century of life. Hence, there is hardly anything in the literature establishing just what is "normal". Further, it isn't obvious (to me) that "normal" is necessarily a desirable condition, though if it is better than you are now doing, then it is certainly on the list of possible improved conditions. The really important questions are "What is optimal for me?" and "What is the best sequence of changes to reach my optimum?"

For example, it appears that as people age, at some point their metabolic control systems give up on the modes of operation that they have been using and switch to various "fall back" modes, including chronically low body temperature, which brings on the end to their lives. What if we could train people to recognize when this started to happen and to take immediate corrective action? A healthy immune system can kill off approximately one ounce of cancer tissue, as well as most other problems. Perhaps such a person could live to be VERY old.

Simultaneous changes in programming and environment

Primitive Man lived in caves, in tents, wore animal skins, went to sleep when it was dark, got up when it was light, never worried about taxes, etc., etc. In short, we have molded a world that ill suits our bodies. Our bodies adapt as well as possible, but these adaptations often don't serve us well. For example, there is a daylight sensor in your eyes that controls your melatonin production. Being in a brightly-lit environment in the evening suppresses your melatonin production, which can keep your body temperature up at night and cause no end to health problems (hint; wear sunglasses in the evening).

However, even if you could put animal skins on and go back to a cave, you wouldn't do well, because your body has adapted to your present environment. What you need to do is to figure out what you should change in your environment to make it possible to live well, and make such changes in your metabolism as are needed to work well with your new environment, so that you and your new environment work well together.

For example, if your daytime temperature is low, you have probably gotten used to wearing light clothing, which increases the amount of adrenaline needed to warm you up, which in turn gives you more energy. However, this will be a BIG problem once you move your temperature up to where it belongs.

You may have to get rid of those florescent lights at home, because they will mess up your melatonin if you use them in the evening. However, none of these will make any significant difference until you actually reset your daytime temperature back up to 98.6oF where it belongs.

Conditions needed for reprogramming

Before reprogramming, you will want to address any additional underlying conditions that will "get in the way" of this effort. The most common ones are hydration, heavy metal poisoning, and parasites. Yes, you can reset your low body temperature and other parameters without drinking more water, removing your amalgam fillings, chelating your mercury, and testing for and killing your parasites. However, first putting your glands back into good working order will not only make reprogramming easier, but will avoid the need for a potential second round of "impulse tuning" later when you finally realize that you would be a lot better off without your heavy metals.

Due to their varied genetic past, people have several hydration set points, for "tanking up", steady-state operation, and drought. Unfortunately, our "modern" society tends to push most people into constant "drought" mode, causing a lot of unnecessary stress to their bodies and subsequent medical problems, see . This is easy to correct in most people - just slowly but steadily drink several glasses of water flavored with just a little fruit juice (I like mine hot), then stop when you are really full and pay attention to thirst signals like dry mouth. Soon you will be a little thirsty again, as your body attempts to maintain a higher level of hydration. After a couple of weeks of practice at this, you will learn to maintain this higher level of hydration without paying much attention, and you will probably feel a lot better as a result.

You might be aware of a LOT of controversy regarding whether the mercury in amalgam fillings actually causes problems. I have read a lot on this, and the articles that "debunk" this "myth" all make some really bad assumptions. The main bad assumption is looking at "typical" dental patients, who are young and have new-technology sealed amalgam fillings that don't put out the huge amounts of mercury that older unsealed fillings did when they were new. Amalgam fillings put out most of the mercury in the first year that they are ever going to put out. Further, these studies only consider what is in the body tissues, when much higher and more important amounts will accumulate in your brain after many decades of exposure. I put my own numbers into the formula used in one of these "debunking" studies, and found that I SHOULD have TWICE enough to cause symptoms. There is a lot of bad science on both sides of this dispute, but my analysis says that the mercury problem is very real, and the success of modern chelation methods (discussed below) proves this point.

The embryonic emerging science of heavy metal removal is just now passing the point of not causing even more problems than it cures. Amalgam fillings can now be removed without dumping a bunch more mercury into you, and new chelation methods are available that move the mercury into your urine rather than your bowels. From your bowels, much of it would be methylated and reabsorbed, to then move to your brain and cause even more problems than it would if it remained in your body. There are lots of horror stories of people who removed their amalgam fillings and went through chelation, only to end up worse off than when they started, so make sure both your dentist and doctor aren't still in the dark ages.

The latest amalgam removal methods utilize a rubber dam to catch all of the debris, a fume ventilator to remove the fumes before anyone can breathe them, and a separate clean air supply to keep you from possibly breathing anything that the fume ventilator missed. You should have an alcoholic drink before and after amalgam removal, as alcohol has been shown to effectively inhibit the absorption of mercury.

The latest chelation methods require swallowing/drinking the stuff, rather than taking it via IV, so chelation is now a LOT less hassle and expense than it used to be.

The MOST important prerequisite to reprogramming is MOTIVATION. This establishes the mind-body connection to get your subconscious hypothalamus to do what your conscious mind has determined is in your best interests. Hence, if you aren't so sure whether resetting your temperature is really a good thing, then you should first completely resolve this issue in your mind BEFORE attempting to change anything.

The secret to reprogramming is that you must present your control system with a unique and "impossible" situation. For example, you take a pill and, without your control system doing anything unusual, your temperature jumps up a degree or two to land right at your old daytime temperature that you abandoned long ago. Your control system tries to turn the temperature down, but nothing happens.

However, this time you feel great. You don't almost die like the last time you were at this temperature (e.g. when you had general anesthesia for your tonsillectomy decades ago). Maybe this isn't such a bad temperature after all!

Later, when you attempt to push your temp up without drugs, your control system will still resist, but not like your very life depends on it, so with some difficulty you will be able to push your temperature up. After several months, your control system will finally figure out that this temperature is actually better than the lower temperature that it had been using, and your cure will be complete.

What proof is there that doing all this will cure your particular medical problems? Correcting the various ubiquitous problems (e.g. hydration, heavy metals, parasites, and metabolic control system problems) that many people have certainly won't hurt. Fixing these things makes most people feel a LOT better, whether or not they actually "cure" anything. If problems remain, then you will have removed the most common concurrent problems that mask your particular problem, giving your practitioner of traditional medical methods a "straight shot" at doing whatever "modern" medicine can do for you.

The day of reprogramming

You've read everything you could find regarding the problem you have and the metabolic control systems that relate to it. You can now usually guess your temperature within 0.2oF. You've had enough of your problems and are MOTIVATED, and you are as ready as you are going to get to be done with your problems for once and for all.

You dress very warmly and you start taking whatever pills you have decided are best to force your temperature up to where you want it to go, and your body starts to fight the change. For a while you feel like crap - first you feel like you are about to expire from the heat, then after you warm up a little more you might develop some goose bumps. You take your temperature almost continuously, checking your thermometer every few minutes, and with a little luck you overshoot past 99oF, and then you gradually settle back down on 98.6oF over several hours and you feel pretty good.

Then you crash. In a couple of minutes you go from OK to shivering with every coat you own on and with every blanket you own over them. You fight to keep from falling asleep. However, you expected this, so you take a little T4, which takes about 45 minutes to work. You start to wonder if resetting your temperature was really such a good idea, because if something was going to go dreadfully wrong with your metabolism, it would probably feel something like this.

After what seems like an eternity the T4 takes effect and you feel OK again. Hours later your temperature drops and you feel exhausted and ready for bed, and wonder what tomorrow will bring.

The year of recovery from your prior condition,
and subsequent reprogramming that may be needed

All that the initial day of reprogramming does is to demonstrate to your metabolic control system that you won't die by utilizing an operating mode that it has previously abandoned. It takes months before your metabolic control system will actually prefer the same mode of operation that you do, so you will have to continue to "push" your body into the condition you want it to be in. This typically involves espresso and a hot shower for those who are increasing their body temperatures.

* The first major milestone is when your temperature stays where it should be for the entire day. This usually happens in a few days.

* The second mayor milestone is when your temperature comes up pretty much on its own, which can happen immediately for some people, but which takes weeks if you have had your condition for decades.

* The third major milestone is when, if you depress your temperature back down to 97oF by standing in the
cold, then come back into a warm environment, your temperature climbs back up to 98.6oF rather than staying down at 97.something. This will probably take a couple of months or more.

* The fourth major milestone is when you have completed your "impulse tuning" and can drink a large glass of
ice water without dumping your temperature back down to 97.something for the rest of the day.

* The fifth and last major milestone is when you finally decide that you are now in good enough shape to "let go" and just let things work by themselves - and they do, with maybe an occasional minor setback.

Discussion of the hazards

Since many metabolic control system problems, like low body temperature, are eventually terminal, and none of the usual problems with treatment are terminal, the biggest hazard is failure to successfully fix the problem. This can be a double disaster, because a half-hearted effort can and sometimes does train your metabolic system to better resist such efforts in the future. One 70-year-old fellow I know tried conventional Type I Wilson's Syndrome treatment several times, but each time quit without success. Then, he discovered that the SRT3 pills he was using no longer had ANY effect on him at all. How could this be? All that his metabolic control system need do is to dump T4 or melatonin to short-circuit the action of the T3, and given enough practice, his system had finally figured this out. The lesson: Failure is NOT an option, because quitting now will just make things even more difficult in the future, and leave things in a bad state until then. Hence, you should NEVER quit without dragging your temperature up to 98.6oF and keeping it there for a while, unless for some reason it is simply impossible to do this. Failures should NOT be followed by further similar attempts that will probably also fail, and in the process make future technology approaches even more difficult. Instead, you must keep detailed notes regarding exactly what happened, and await new technology to succeed at some future time.

In 1991, a 50-year-old lady with a heart arrhythmia died while receiving a Type I Wilson's Syndrome treatment. The lessons learned in her case were:

* Never use SRT3 pills on anyone with a heart arrhythmia. Instead, use more frequent (though less convenient) 5-mcg Cytomel pills, whose effects wear off much more quickly when you stop taking them. With another decade of experience, we now know that Type I Wilson's Syndrome is really rare, and that SRT3 is rarely the treatment of choice for
low body temperature.

* Never take enough thyroid hormone supplements to drive your temperature up past normal while alone, most especially if you have any sort of heart arrhythmia. Instead, take them in the presence of someone capable of keeping you alive until you can receive competent medical attention. Alternatively, you can hang around a hospital emergency room lobby when you do this, with a paper in your shirt pocket explaining what you are taking and why. If anything does go wrong, they will know just what to do to keep you alive until the drugs wear off. With another decade of experience, we now know that such problems are REALLY rare. Of course, since Type II Wilson's SyndromeTM treatment is completed in just one day, it is easy to arrange for 100% paramedical coverage in case something goes wrong.

Another hazard is fear of procedure. There are a LOT of interconnections between your conscious brain and your hypothalamus, so if you aren't so sure that 98.6oF is such a good idea, then there is a good chance that your hypothalamus won't want to risk switching to 98.6oF during the day. My recommendation is that a patient must REALLY want to be reset to 98.6oF before this procedure should be done. Learning to predict their temperature not only teaches a needed skill, but also demonstrates a significant level of commitment before proceeding, and shows the patient just how important a few tenths of a degree can be.

The biggest hazards associated with successfully resetting your temperature back up to 98.6oF are the problems that will come because your body will be working differently, while your metabolic control system remains nearly unchanged (except for changing your daytime temperature). For example, raising your daytime body temperature may typically cause:

* Adrenal fatigue, unless you dress a little
UNcomfortably warmly for the first few months following resetting,

* HypOglycemia, unless you divide your desserts in half and eat them 20 minutes apart.

* Minor back problems like facet syndrome, where asymptomatic misalignments become painful as your muscle tone improves at your now higher body temperature. A couple of chiropractic adjustments and a Yoga class will usually straighten things out in short order.

* Some loss of attention span, especially for things that you don't care about (but your IQ goes WAY up).

* Inability to sleep more than 6-7 hours (you won't need any more than this).

Most of these problems will usually go away with impulse tuning, but that comes later, after your body has learned to get up and stay up to 98.6oF without your continuing attention. In the meantime, you may have to deal with these problems.

Of course, there are always the people with the "skip the words, just give me the pills" attitude. There is no course of action that is NOT high risk with these people. If you don't give them the pills, then they will be at serious risk due to their condition. However, if you do give them the pills, they will probably fail, making future treatment more difficult/impossible. Your only hope with these people is through attitude adjustment. Try explaining that you WILL NOT give them any pills until they can first successfully predict their temperature. Lotsa luck.

Untested Treatments for Adaptation

Where a patient's metabolic control system has learned to short circuit the hormones that you might use to reprogram them, there appears to remain some so-far untested possibilities.

* For several days, a friend arrives each morning and gives you a pill to take. These are all placebos except one, and you don't know which one, that contains a very large dose of whatever
thermogenic hormone you have selected. Then, with no warning, suddenly your temperature (or other parameter) is changing VERY rapidly. By the time that your metabolic control system has realized what is happening and dump the antidote, you will have already switched temperatures. However, the antidote can probably quickly switch things back, so you must be ready to immediately fight to keep your new temperature with hot showers, etc. This would require a LARGE dose, using shunt regulation to deal with any excess, and medical attention close by in case things get completely out of control.

* Another strategy is to first exhaust whatever your metabolic control system has decided to use as an antidote. This isn't easy, because of the compensation period, and so would have to be done QUICKLY. This would take some lab work and an approach designed specifically for the person involved.

If you attempt to treat a person who has apparently adapted to thermogenic hormones, you should first contact us for any recent feedback from others who have already treated this in other patients. You should also let us know what happened regardless of what you did, so we can tell the next person to contact us. These patients are quite rare, so we must exchange notes if we are to eventually refine a reliable and effective cure for them.

We also intend to establish a registry of problematical patients, e.g. to track patients who might go from provider to provider, to avoid contributing to adaptation and other problems through lack of knowledge about the prior history of problematical patients.

Appendix A: The myth of hypOthyroidism

There are a number of popular authors who have found a large following by recommending that people with slightly elevated TSH levels take thyroid supplements to feel better. As a result, many doctors will supplement TSH values down to 2.0, and some psychiatrists will supplement TSH values as low as 1.0. These arguments are based on one very questionable assumption: If taking thyroid supplements makes you feel better, than you should take thyroid supplements, rather than finding and fixing the REAL underlying problem.

There is a simple test to see if you are really deficient: Take enough to feel better (e.g. 1/2 to one grain of Armour), and see if they just stop working after a few days (which with TSH values less than 5 or 6, they probably will stop working). If they stop working, then you are entirely capable of making enough thyroid hormone, only your metabolic control system has decided for some reason to regulate at a lower level. In this case, you should discontinue supplementation and address the problem some other, more appropriate way.

Some doctors will even tell you to take more, and more, and MORE until you finally overwhelm the body's ability to regulate at a lower level. This failure to fix the real problem, coupled with your loss of regulation, will cause no end of problems. Just read a few hundred random postings on by people who have been sucked into this mess, yet are clueless about the bad advice that they have been given. THIS appears to be the primary cause of Type I Wilson's Syndrome.

It appears that the thyroid supplements that most people take don't address any real thyroid problems at all. Instead, these supplements address the effects of low body temperature and/or adrenal fatigue, which should ideally be addressed at their respective sources as you work your way up your own particular cause and effect chain.

This may well be THE most widely practiced medical treatment there is, though the doctors who are doing this universally believe that they are really treating mild hypothyroidism, complete with the TSH test results to "prove" it.

However, with less adrenaline, their patients need to produce more thyroid hormones to maintain their body temperatures, and to do this, their pituitary glands must produce more TSH, and hence the higher TSH test results.

Of course my hidden agenda here is to find some simple procedure that works well for most people, so you don't have to spend weeks of your time getting to the root of your problems. THIS is the reason to always put the standard things (like body temperature) right before attempting to analyze or treat any specific symptoms.

Yes, some people really ARE hypOthyroid, even at 98.6oF, but there is really no way to tell without first getting your temperature up to 98.6oF, stabilizing, correcting any adrenal fatigue, and then checking your TSH level. Simply dressing more warmly can often treat mild hypOthyroidism at 98.6oF, even though this method does NOT work at lower 97.something body temperatures, because it lowers the adrenaline level and brings on chronic fatigue at lower temperatures. Of course, more severe cases of hypOthyroidism may actually require supplementation.

Remember that, other things being equal, raising your metabolism probably shortens your ultimate life span, so this should be your last, rather than your first resort.

Treating adrenal fatigue with thyroid hormones

We now know that doctors have a LOT of experience doing this, all the while thinking that they are treating some sort of mild hypothyroidism, though this is generally only in low temp patients. What happens if we do this intentionally to 98.6oF people with out eyes wide open?

As of this writing, two people have tried this after their Type II Wilson's SyndromeTM treatment, both with good results. Dan used 6-mcg doses of T2, and Mike used 12-mcg doses of T4, though many doctors recommend a single dose of T3 early in the morning, followed by a dose of T4 a little later in the day. Both Dan and Mike took two of these doses each day, one soon after they woke up, and another hours later to even out the effects. Of course, their sensitivity to just which type of thyroid hormone they used is proportional to the dosage, which in these cases is very small, so this is probably one of those cases where just about anything works.

I didn't do this during my recovery. I was a classic "hard case", complete with atrial fibrillation that was sensitive to thyroid hormones, and I was the very first person to ever try Type II Wilson's SyndromeTM treatment, so I didn't want to take ANY additional unnecessary chances. I was doing OK with LOTS of warm clothing and no thyroid hormone supplements, and didn't want to risk my apparent success path. Now, after Dan and Mike's successes, I would probably opt to at least try some thyroid hormone supplements if I had this to do all over again.

The final word on the best such therapy awaits a competent researcher undergoing Type II Wilson's SyndromeTM therapy, trying various combinations of thyroid hormones to see what works best (for them), and writing a section of this book to replace this one. At present, I am partial to T2, both because it is non-prescription, and because the body adapts to it less than with T3 or T4, so it will be easier to taper off of when the time comes. Further, T4 can actually DEPRESS temperatures and INCREASE adrenal requirements, so it should never be taken until AFTER you pop up to 98.6oF in the morning, and then it should only be taken in small doses.

Of course, you should taper off of your thyroid supplements after a few months, when your body has learned to properly dispense its adrenaline at your restored body temperature. This recovery period will probably be shorter (e.g. 2 months) for people who have lost their ability to regulate at 98.6oF recently and during their adult years. Longer (e.g. one year) recovery periods will be required for people who have probably been low temp for decades, and/or since childhood (e.g. with a childhood tonsillectomy). Remember to dress warmer than usual while tapering off of thyroid hormones and for a week or few following, to avoid afternoon "crashing" during this withdrawal period.

Appendix B: Original paper on reprogramming neurons

This paper was presented at the IEEE First Annual International Conference on Neural Networks in June of 1987, and formed the theoretical basis for rapid metabolic reprogramming. Note that Steve Richfield has brought this from a mathematical hypothesis, to the neurological laboratory, then to Artificial Intelligence research, and now to developing cures to previously intractable medical problems, thereby bringing these widely disparate fields closer together.

HIGH-SPEED LEARNING

IN DEDUCTIVE-REASONING SYSTEMS

by Steve Richfield

Neurosoft

Overview - Quest for the Ultimate Neuronal Functionality

In the field of neural networks, a competition has developed for the best neural network algorithm. Before starting a search for the ultimate neuronal functionality, one might reasonably inquire whether there is evidence suggesting that such may or may not exist. The presence of dozens of neurotransmitter substances and hundreds of neuron types (not to mention such observed oddities as non-monotonic synaptic transfer functions and pre-synaptic inhibition) certainly suggests that if a simple "unified theory" exists, that it has not been discovered in biological systems.

Two problems can be hypothesized where no single functionality could suffice for both. For example:

o Where there are enough neuronal components and the input data is reliable enough, neurons could instantly adjust their function to exclude those inputs which do not reliably indicate the proper result (deductive reasoning).

o Where the data is noisy and incomplete, such immediate exclusion of inputs would destroy the network (evidential reasoning).

A further difference between deductive and evidential neurons is that while evidential neurons should enhance synaptic weighting according to correlation across the synapse, deductive neurons (as shown later) must decrease synaptic weighting according to the correlation.

The applicability of deductive and evidential systems is a function of the characteristics of the data -- deductive can learn completely in one pass over a complete data sample, and is more accurate owing to its recognition of the combinatorial constraints within the data, whereas evidential provides an answer even with the noisiest of data, though it learns much more slowly owing to the statistical nature of the learning process, and fails to recognize combinatorial constraints within the data. Prior (genetic) knowledge would be valuable in selecting the correct neuron type. Alternatively, two networks could compete by different methods for the best functionality. Another approach follows failed deductive attempts with the substitution of evidential neurons. Finally, deductive neurons could do whatever they can and present the results to evidential neurons to fill in the gaps. While there seems to be ample evidence to support the existence of both deductive and evidential neurons, there is presently little evidence to indicate how they are interconnected to work together.

While one could imagine neurons which work both ways, it appears that to use the general methodology of multiplying inputs by weighting factors, adding them up, and running the result through a non-linear transform requires the use of probabilities for communication in evidential reasoning and logarithms of probabilities in deductive reasoning. There seems to be no way in which neurons could switch the means of communication from linear to logarithmic to alter the internal functionality. Further, there is no evidence of something in between linear and logarithmic for transitional neurons.

Other units of communication which have been observed in the laboratory include:

o Logarithm of signal strength for sensory input "sharpening".

o Linear with joint position for proper motor servo-control.

This leads to the belief that neurons function in various specialized ways, which must be carefully hypothesized, analyzed, and verified in the laboratory. Neurons operating in completely different mathematical systems may differ only in subtle ways, such as response nonlinearities and learning methodology. This paper concentrates on one such functionality (deductive reasoning neurons) which has been identified, analyzed, and verified in the laboratory.

Deductive Reasoning

This is an explanation of the workings of a probability-manipulating network which rapidly develops deductive reasoning mechanisms. The functional details of this proposal are not inconsistent with biological neurons.

While it is not known how extensive this form of computation is in the brain (with its dozens of neurotransmitters and hundreds of neuron types), experimental evidence seems to clearly establish that this operation does indeed happen (see Proof section below). Further, since there has been very little published showing other synaptic transfer functions, this operation may be quite common.

Deductive neurons are useful in certain classes of problems, where the assumption can be made that any achievable desired function can be formed exactly, whether or not the neurons are successful in discovering exactly what the desired functions are. In addition to defining deductive reasoning, this underlying assumption is a key to solving the problem.

A method of "turning off" synapses is proposed. Starting with all synapses active and rapidly eliminating inappropriate synapses can form desired function in the least possible time, at some considerable risk from noise. Neurons which are subject to noise which causes an input to be erroneously "turned off" may subsequently not be able to form a suitable function, and may hence have the remainder of their inputs turned off until there are none left. To avoid this problem where noise is present, the rate of turn off can be adjusted to reflect the confidence that a synapse should be turned off given the number of indicative events.

Input Relationships and their Impact on Probabilistic Logic

It appears that some neural function may be probabilistic ANDing, ORing, and NOTing, somewhat akin to the equivalent digital functions. The crucial difference between probabilistic and digital systems is that the probabilistic functions are continuous while their digital counterparts do not have defined functionality for intermediate inputs; somewhat like logic gates that produce intermediate outputs when given intermediate inputs (see Figure 1). Indeed, digital logic functions can be viewed as probabilistic logic functions, which are only called upon to process 0 and 1 probabilities. No special ORing function is required, since it can be synthesized from the AND and NOT functions.

The proper algorithms for performing probabilistic logic vary depending upon how the "independent" input variables are related to each other. Considering that many different analyses must be performed on the same inputs, the results of those analyses must show some correlation. Lateral inhibitory effects will reduce correlation. Table 1 shows some of the ways in which "independent" inputs may be related.

Table 2 shows some of the ways of computing probabilistic logic functions depending upon how the inputs are related to one another.

Table 2

Relationship

AND

OR2

Correlated1
Independent
Inhibiting
Inverse

MIN(a, b)
a * b
0
0

MAX(a, b)
a + b - (a * b)
a + b
1

1. Note, as in Fuzzy Set Theory.

2. Note that OR(a, b) = a + b - AND(a, b) for all relationships.

How Neurons Might Perform Probabilistic Logic

Suppose that the units of communication between neurons are the logarithms of probabilities of assertions being true. Adding input corresponds to multiplying probabilities, which corresponds to ANDing independent probabilities. If the inputs were highly correlated (ala Fuzzy Sets), the proper operation to AND them would be to select the minimum of them. Given partial correlation, an operation between these extremes would be appropriate (see handling Correlated Inputs section).

The probabilistic OR is the sum of the probabilities minus the AND or product of their probabilities (which may be insignificant due to mutual inhibition between input neurons). If the AND is insignificant, then the sum will approximately equal the maximum value (a believable neurological structure). Note that it is mathematically possible to add values for which only the logarithms are known by using only addition, subtraction, and appropriate nonlinearities, by:

ln (A + B) = ln B + ln(1 + e(ln A - ln B) )

There is currently no clear laboratory evidence establishing or denying the existence of ORing structures in biological neurons. ORing structures could function by the maximum value method shown above, appropriate setting of the offset (threshold) to a lesser value, or via:

A OR B = NOT ((NOT A) AND NOT B))

Handling Correlated Inputs

The weighted geometric mean provides a result adjustably between that appropriate for independent and that appropriate for correlated inputs. The weights would be adjusted according to correlation with other inputs, so as to be low for highly-correlated inputs and high for independent inputs. The sum of the weights for a group of highly-correlated inputs that are functioning as a single effective input would be one. Similarly, a totally independent input would also have a weight of one. Remember, since the probabilities are represented by their logarithms, multiplying by a synaptic weight effectively raises the represented probability to the fractional power indicated by the weight.

In linear representation, a weighted geometric mean is formed by raising the several arguments to selected fractional powers and multiplying them together. In logarithmic representation, the weighted geometric mean is formed by multiplying the several arguments by numbers between 0 and 1, then adding the resulting products together -- sounds like neurons!

Some functional characteristics of geometric means include:

o Any zero argument will force a zero result.

o Slightly weighted inputs have relatively little affect on the result until they become almost zero.

o Strongly weighted inputs detract from a high output more quickly as the represented probability drops below 1.

Proof

This implies a complex function for an inhibitory synapse, which would be performing an AND NOT function in logarithmic space, specifically:

not A

=

1 - A

Definition of desired function.

ln not A

=

ln (1 - A)

Convert to logarithmic representation by utilizing only logarithms of inputs and giving the logarithm of the output.

=

ln (1 - eln A )

f(x)

=

ln (1 - ex )

Necessary function for inhibitory syn-
apse from above.

ln not A

=

f(ln A)

Substituting inhibitory synapse func-
tion.

As shown in Figure 2, synapses having exactly this peculiar nonlinearity have been found in the laboratory.

Experimental data from the inhibitory synapse connecting the spiking neurons PD and PY of the lobster stomatogastric ganglion (Grubard, Raper, and Hartline, 1977).

Curve is Vpost = F + W * S * ln (1 - e(Vpre - F) / S )

F = Offset voltage = -41 millivolts.
W = Synaptic weighting = 0.4 in this instance.
S = Voltage scale factor = 7 millivolts.

How Learning Works

The methodology behind high-speed learning is as follows:

1. A new, previously unfulfilled, and valuable function can be recognized by a neuron as follows:

o A lack of lateral inhibition indicates that other neurons cannot recognize the present input.

o The presence of driven neurons that would have produced a large output if only the present neuron provided it with one more large input indicates that recognizing the function would indeed affect the system.

o The function is useful to other neurons (indicated by utilized output connections driving cells which go along with the output signal).

o The output bandwidth is adequate (both 0s and 1s, with minimal in-betweens). Not only does this seek to enhance the information content ala Shannon, but also seeks to cluster ala cluster analysis for unsupervised learning.

The function formed by these criteria can be sought by disconnecting those erroneous inputs which were responsible for the output of the neuron when its output was clearly wrong by the above criteria.

There are a variety of proposals as to how this might be accomplished biologically. One interesting proposal marks those synapses for possible future deletion whose inputs effectively keep the post-synaptic neuron from firing. Later, those synapses are deleted if a slow retrograde signal is seen from other downstream neurons indicating that the neuron should not have been kept from firing.

At any moment in time, an input may be high or low (ignoring for the moment the in-between cases), and the neuron may be providing a high or low output. The four combinations include:

1) low-in/low-out
2) low-in/high-out
3) high-in/low-out
4) high-in/high-out

If the low-in/high-out case is seldom encountered, then the input is suitable as an efficacious input as it would obey AND criteria. Hence the presence of this case would be expected to diminish the synaptic weighting. Similar logic shows that the absence of the high-in/high-out case makes an input suitable as an inhibitory input. It thus appears that the specific synaptic weighting my be the result of what does not happen more than what does happen.

Note that these adjustments could be best carried out on the desired output rather than the actual output. The desired output is the generated output when the neuron drove downstream cells successfully, and is opposite to the generated output when the neuron failed to drive downstream cells successfully.

Considering the requirement that a neuron's output must be useful to other neurons; material can visually be seen flowing down axons from the neuron cell body toward the end of the axon. Should an axon be cut or pinched, the inputs to that cell disconnect. Then the cells providing inputs to the blocked cells disconnect their inputs! The cells then become hypersensitive (presumably searching for a useful function). This phenomenon is believed by some researchers to be the cause of phantom limb pain in amputees. This provides for a sort of learning through constipation. Assuming that this affect on the inputs is due to an inability to successfully drive outputs, the predicted phenomenon has clearly been demonstrated.

2. Neurons retain their function unaltered and wait until the appropriate conditions are present. If a neuron finds itself in this situation and is without a "cast in concrete" tried and true functionality, it can broaden its response to include the new and needed function by altering its response to ignore those inputs which are low at this time.

3. Each time a neuron makes these changes, many inputs may be cast aside. If the function required is within the capability of the neuron to perform, then the maximum set of consistent inputs will be identified as quickly as possible, and the neuron will form its function in a few events. However, if the function is too complex or if the proper inputs are not available then all of the inputs will be eliminated, and the neuron will be totally without function, to start at the beginning of this procedure.

It is easy to see how a single erroneous event could doom a neuron to form a bad function that eventually has to be abandoned.

If a gross excess of neurons is available, then each layer of processing can be formed in a minimum of time by simply having enough neurons to support the functional attrition. This may be accomplished biologically by widely connecting neurons, so that they may try and abandon many functions before they find their niche. With barely enough neurons to form the entire system, all of the neurons of the final system could compete to form the best possible initial layers, making layered processing a functional result rather than a constructional necessity.

Remember that we are computing probabilities which are adjusted based both on the inputs and their history, as well as knowledge of the accuracy of the present function. Any function which has never had clean data can not return a solid zero or one probability.

Impact of Information Quality on Learning Rate

This uncertainty, based upon not-exactly-zero lateral inhibition, not-maximally-sensitive downstream neurons, not-quite-sure retrograde information which was sent sometime ago, mitigates the elimination of synapses in real-world systems. Hence, while the events described above would eliminate synapses if they occurred in their purest form, synaptic elimination more probably occurs in large but not total steps based on real-world not-quite-sure information.

The relationship between the quality of information and the extent of synaptic elimination is a function of the sensory and computational noise of the system, and the resulting system-specific relationship between signal amplitude and confidence value.

Conclusion

The concepts of deductive reasoning and communication by logarithms of probabilities must be taken seriously, given the laboratory verification of the crucial predicted inhibitory synaptic transfer function. This should also serve as a prototype for assessing other theories in the future.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Katherine Grubard and William Calvin, without whose help the theories presented here would only be so much unverified speculation. The future of the field of neural networks may well be limited to the ability to obtain laboratory verification to separate correct plausible theories from incorrect plausible theories. This generally requires the considerable assistance of neurological researchers, whose efforts in this area are not funded by anyone at this time.

References

1. Grubard, K., J. A. Raper, and D. K. Hartline, "Graded Synaptic Transmission Between Identified Spiking Neurons". Journal of Physiology, Volume 50, pp 508-521, 1983.

2. Grubard, K. and Calvin, W. H., "The Neurosciences: Fourth Study Program, edited by F. O. Schmitt and F. G. Worden". pp 320. MIT Press: Cambridge MA. 1979.

3. Grubard, K., "Synaptic Transmission Without Action Potentials: Input Output Properties of the Non-Spiking Presynaptic Neuron". Journal of Neurophysiology, Volume 41, pp 1014-1025, 1978.

4. Grubard, K., J. A. Raper, and D. K. Hartline, "Non-spiking synaptic transmission between spiking neurons". Neurosci. Abstr. 3, 1977.

Appendix C: Discussion of PID control loop stability

PID is an Acronym for Proportional, Integral, and Differential. Most complex feedback control systems from oil refineries to HVAC systems to your own metabolic control system utilize PID control loops. These systems look at the difference between what something (e.g. body temperature) is and what it should be (the Proportional term), and decide how much correction to apply. If the system is moving too slowly (the Differential term) it may apply a larger correction, and if it is moving too fast toward the correct value, then it may reduce the correction. If things settle down, but the result continues to stay a little off due to a finite Proportional term, then integrating this difference (the Integral term) will produce a result that grows and grows until its contribution to the correction eventually forces the result to be exactly correct.

Suppose that through some limitation, your body is unable to reach its target temperature. It will continue to integrate the error, producing a larger and larger control output (more and more hormones) in an impossible effort to reach the target temperature. When the hormones run out, things will go from bad to worse, because even the attempt to increase temperature will cease, and your temperature will drop.

However, your suddenly dropping hormone levels and temperature will make a huge contribution to the Differential terms, producing wild outputs from the control system. This will jerk the various controlled organ systems around, causing still more problems, that can end up in an unstable, repeatedly failing "loop", or alternatively, exhausting most hormones and leaving the patient unable to do anything.

To avoid really serious problems (like death) when PID control loops become unstable, PID control loops usually operate in the presence of an outer "heuristic" control loop, that takes radical action when things get out of control, to keep things operating well enough to survive. When things again settle down, control is again handed back to the PID control loop to maintain optimal operation. This combination is often referred to as "dual loop control".

Appendix D: How to cure an "Incurable" disease

"I'm sorry to have to inform you but you have (cancer, emphysema, atrial fibrillation, etc.) which we cannot cure, but we will make you as comfortable as possible." What the doctor isn't telling you is that some people have found effective non-traditional therapies, and that in the process of making you comfortable, he will hide the very symptoms that you will need to find your cure. He IS telling you that he is not prepared to invest the months of effort to figure out what is need to cure your condition. In short, you are on your own, and better off without your doctor than with him. Alternatively...

"You have (clogged arteries, acute appendicitis, etc.), so we need to (operate, administer chemotherapy, etc.) RIGHT NOW to save your life. No, he is probably wrong, because if he is not fixing the source of the problem, you will just be right back with something else that is even worse. Further, in doing their damage, they will probably interfere with a truly effective treatment or cure.

OK, you have successfully evaded treatment and gotten back home with the bad news, so what do you do now? I have actually been through both of these situations, in one case walking out of the hospital bent over in pain to avoid being operated on "to save my life". The first step is to read EVERYTHING to completely understand your condition, which is difficult when, for example, it feels like there is a knife stuck in your gut. There will be a variety of holes in this education due to areas that haven't been studied yet, and at least one substantial error in the information available to you that you will initially be unaware of. You will find dozens of things that might help or hurt you. Just checking these things out one at a time would take more time than you probably have.

Clue: Thousands of researchers, together, are pretty bright. If the problem were actually in the area that they are investigating, they would have found the cure years ago. Hence, the problem is almost certainly something else that is not on their "radar screen", and hence probably something pretty simple that you can figure out if you can just shed your "blinders" and look at areas that they have missed.

Now that you can talk intelligently, you talk with every expert that you have identified. Most won't be any help at all, but one or two will have some idea of an area to investigate.

Now you are into trying things. You group unlikely things together, so that if anything has an effect, you can go back and try them in smaller groups to identify which one is effective. Usually none of the things you are trying does anything, so you can eliminate them in groups, etc.

There are lab tests you would like to take, but they are expensive and your doctor doesn't see any "need" for them. Hence, you must sink-test, home-test, and carefully track your symptoms to substitute for tests you can't afford, your doctor won't give you, and/or you can't wait for the results of.

You find some things that help, and look to find out WHY these help. Back to the experts, and you realize that your problem is really just the result of something else you can't directly observe being wrong, and you have moved up the cause and effect chain one link.

I have found that you can move one link up most cause and effect chains for every month of intensive research and experiments you perform. Most "incurable" diseases involve about four links, so expect to spend four months of intensive scrambling, Internetting, reading, experimenting, etc., to find the cure for your condition. Somewhere around the halfway point, you will learn enough to arrest the progression of your condition and/or reduce its symptoms to a tolerable level, which will make the second half of your effort less unpleasant than the first half, until...

You finally figure out what is needed to CURE rather than just treat your condition. However, it requires some action that is unknown to the doctors who abandoned you at the outset, so you will probably have to self-medicate or worse. In my case, I took a TSH test in the hopes that I would show as being enough hypOthyroid to get the doctor to prescribe what I needed, which it did and he did. When he later heard just what I did with the medicine, curing my low body temperature in one day rather than taking the pills for the rest of my life, he promised never to prescribe anything for me ever again! He was mad as hell that I had misled and misused him to actually cure my condition. So much for the best medical advice that money could buy.

Of course, anything powerful enough to be capable of curing an "incurable" condition is potentially dangerous, and there will be no shortage of people who will tell you that you could die, or worse. You listen VERY carefully to these people, estimate the hazards as best you can, and then do what must be done with full knowledge of the potential downside of what you are doing. From personal experience, I can assure you that trying something that no one else has ever tried before can be VERY scary. It is truly unfortunate that our "modern" medical system routinely places people looking for a genuine cure into such situations.

Back to my painful exit from the hospital. I had been diagnosed with acute appendicitis that was expected to quickly get a LOT worse if I weren't operated on ASAP. However, I had similar pains in the past, and my white blood cell count was normal. I asked my doctor how this could be, and he had no explanation, dismissing the possibility that this could have ever previously happened. I requested a second opinion, and so a second doctor made the same diagnosis, and also had no explanation for my prior experience or normal white blood cell count. I asked if they had ever gone in to remove an appendix, only to discover that it was completely normal - they said that they hadn't. This alerted my reality-check, as I have seen enough operations to know that you can find just about anything once you open someone up, so either they hadn't opened very many people up, or they weren't being honest. I asked whether I would probably die if I just walked out - "No, but you'll be back". As soon as I got home, I opened up a "differential diagnosis" medical reference book that I had, to see what the various conditions were that might mimic an appendicitis attack, and discovered "false appendicitis", that was thought to be constipation of a part of the bowel near the appendix. This could happen repeatedly, and would not raise the white count. I drank lots of water and started walking to get things going, and an hour later my "appendicitis" was but a smelly memory. I still have my appendix. So much for incompetent doctors, who won't open their medical books when they clearly have a case that they don't fully understand laying right in front of them.

Appendix E: FAQ

Q. Just what is your protocol?

A. It really depends upon just what your problem is. Different people who seemingly have the same problem, e.g. low daytime body temperature, can in fact have very different internal situations. While a particular methodology, like Type I Wilson's Syndrome therapy might often work on other problems, like Type II Wilson's SyndromeTM, the success rate drops, especially on the "hard cases", like where the patient has had the problem for 50 years or more. Further, application of an inappropriate method can then make it impossible for the correct methods to work later. Since this is an eventually terminal condition, such mistakes can ultimately be deadly.

Q. What laboratory tests guide your actions?

A. Laboratory testing is best used to exclude any organic problems that might be mimicking a control system problem, and for identifying residual conditions after control system problems have been addressed. For example, a TSH test really doesn't tell us much when accompanied by low daytime body temperature. However, once the body temperature is corrected and after a few months of stabilization has passed, including some Impulse Tuning, the TSH test will work as it should and provide accurate information regarding how loaded/overloaded your thyroid might be.

Q. What proof do you have that your methods really work?

A. The question itself carries a considerable misunderstanding of just what these "methods" are. Proof is of interest only when the operation of something is hidden, as when taking some strange little pill that is supposed to "cure" this or that, in which case I too would like to see some proof. My "method" is to expose the operation of your body to you, so you can realize just what is happening at any given time, so that you can see that your temperature should be higher, and when it is raised, you can appreciate the effects.

Q. How can I believe that something that is so orthogonal to standard medical practice can actually work.

A. If you can't believe what you feel. If gaining the ability to accurately predict what will happen with your body in the coming hours. If feeling your predictions unfold as you predicted doesn't convince you, then you really aren't yet ready for this.

Q. What medications do you recommend to reset low daytime body temperature.

A. Many people can be reset without ANY medication. Where medication IS required, T2 or T3, sometimes capped with some T4 is typically used.

Q. What dosage?

A. The correct dosage would be to take exactly the amount needed to set your temperature up to 98.6oF, all at one time when you first get up one morning. So how much is this? People vary widely in their response to hormones, so this is pretty hard to predict. Hence, the currently best approach is to take a low-dosage pill, wait a couple of hours, take another, and wait a couple of hours, etc., until the critical dosage is discovered.

Q. What if I inadvertently take too much?

A. Actually, taking too little is probably a more serious risk. YOU are in control. If you take too much of a thermogenic hormone like T2 or T3, just take off some clothes. For further cooling, drink some ice water. In an extreme overdose, you might need a cold shower. However, in the several people that I have worked with, no one has had any such problem requiring any sort of cooling. This may be telling me that I haven't been as aggressive as I should be, considering the considerable risks to taking too little. Note that temperature overshoot, typically to some temperature around 100oF, is quite normal and is the expected result of set point switching and critical dampening. From there, your temperature settles back down to 98.6oF over several hours. Completely normal people typically overshoot to around 99oF every morning of their lives, and even higher if they take a morning shower.

Q. Isn't Cytomel (T3) dangerous and capable of causing heart arrhythmia?

A. Under the wrong conditions, yes. Remember, normal thyroids make plenty of T3, so your adding some only can cause a problem if you add too much. The first step to having a problem with T3 is having an above-normal body temperature, in which case you should STOP taking T3. However, these treatment methods propose using T3 only for people with below-normal body temperatures, and then, only in the smallest dosages that are commercially available.

Q. My doctor is searching for an organic cause for my atrial fibrillation. Suppose that there is such a cause. Won't efforts to diagnose and treat a dysfunctional metabolic control system just waste time and effort?

A. If, when you learn to observe what your metabolic control system is doing, you can find nothing wrong, then it is time to look for organic causes. If you find something wrong and fix it, as I explain how, and you still have a problem, then look for organic causes. However, in fixing whatever is wrong, you will doubtless feel a LOT better, whether or not you completely cure your atrial fibrillation.

Q. How do I interface these efforts with my doctor's efforts?

A. The point is that, with a little training and a lot of powers of observation, you can provide far more useful information than any lab can, to understand what is wrong with you. However, the really BIG barrier is getting your doctor to listen to you. To illustrate just how blind these guys can be, the doctor whom I worked with, the best Naturopathic Cardiologist that I could find, was furious that I used my thyroid meds the way I did. This is because of potential legal exposure for him. Never mind that the meds cured me (and some of my friends and neighbors) in a single day. Further, he isn't at all interested in resetting HIS OWN low daytime body temperature!

Q. What kind of thermometer works best?

A. Mercury thermometers are most accurate and repeatable, but electronic thermometers are faster. The problem with electronic thermometers is that when their rate of change slows down, they lock on the temperature before it reaches its final value, Hence, most electronic thermometers produce an erroneously low reading. How low? To find out, first take a reading the usual way. Then, leave the thermometer in for several minutes with the power off, then turn the power on and take a reading after the thermometer is fully up to temperature. The difference in these two readings will be the amount that you should add to its readings in the future.

Q. Is it probably that a metabolic control system problem is the entire reason that I am sick?

A. If things like low body temperature directly caused problems like atrial fibrillation, then more than half of the older population would have it, so there is obviously a LOT more to the story to understand just why only certain people (like us) get it. In my own case, I suspect that it was the intersection of childhood mercury poisoning that left mercury in my brain long after it flushed from my body, low body temperature from a tonsillectomy, and maybe some contribution from a leaky mitral valve. The point here is that my low body temperature was easily correctable, and research on mercury is proceeding so fast that an ideal treatment will probably be available in a year or two, but a 100% repair for my imperfect mitral valve probably won't be available anytime soon. Since many problems like atrial fibrillation are threshold phenomena, you fix what you can, and with any luck that will be enough.

Q. My nighttime temp is 97.2oF, my daytime temp is 98.6oF, I don't crash. I sleep well at night, my bowels work as they should, etc., yet I have idiopathic atrial fibrillation. What do I do now?

A. Look for other causes, as it sounds like your metabolic control system is working OK. Of course, NOTHING is ever "idiopathic" once you finally figure out what is causing it. From what I can tell, around half of the people with idiopathic atrial fibrillation have an underlying metabolic control system problem which, when corrected, will eliminate or greatly improve their condition. Of course, these people also have other things like dehydration and heavy metal poisoning wrong with them that also contribute to their atrial fibrillation.

Q. How do I know whether my problems are due to a problem with my metabolic control system?

A. Control system problems act distinctly different from other sorts of problems. For example, suppose that you have some organic basis for your low body temperature. Then, if you are subjected to cold, your temperature will drop continuously until either you are returned to a warm environment, or until you die. However, if you do have a control system problem, then your temperature will remain relatively constant, albeit too low, regardless of your environmental temperature. The trick is to see whether your problems are under some, albeit inappropriate control, or whether they are changing wildly and without limit in response to your environment.

Q. I feel OK now, so why should I bother to correct my low daytime temperature or other metabolic control system problems?

A. You WILL eventually get worse, and eventually die of some indirect consequence of this, probably due to immune suppression or arterial obstruction. As this progresses, some problems gradually overtake you, and some come suddenly. It is the latter that are deadly, because they kill you before the doctors can act.

Q. Aren't some people more prone to low temperature than others?

A. Yes, especially Native Americans and the Irish. This is probably because these groups have been subjected to EXTREME famines, so that only the strongest survived, and low body temperatures reduce the amount of food needed to stay alive. Hence, only those who were genetically predisposed to low daytime body temperatures survived to pass this gene down. This is probably behind the widespread occurrence of insulin resistant diabetes and obesity that are now sweeping Native American communities, most of which could be eliminated in weeks by resetting these people's daytime body temperatures back up to 98.6oF.

Q. Where do I find a doctor to do this?

A. As of this writing, there are none. However, as this book is read by doctors, I expect some doctors to let me know that they are prepared to administer metabolic control system treatments, whereupon I will post contact information for them on a web site.

Q. Where do you get this stuff - you sure don't give many references.

A. Most of the facts have come from various doctors who either belong to the Smart Life Forum or have been clients or associates of mine over the years. There is far more that is "common knowledge" and "standard practice" than you will ever find in research papers. I rolled these together with a different explanation that fits the same observations, explaining that many problems are related to metabolic control system programming problems rather than various sorts of "hormone imbalances". Of course this is just a theory, a model, like other theories and models that it challenges/replaces, that operates within a somewhat different paradigm than does conventional medicine. The test is in its ability to propose new cures that really work, where proposals based on prior theories/models have failed, which has been very successful so far.

Q. What are Steve Richfield's credentials?

A. There are presently no credentials that are applicable to metabolic control system reprogramming, though the closest thing is probably Steve's IEEE membership that he now holds. However, Steve does have the following applicable background:

1961. Constructed a game theory computer that solved complex war strategy problems faster than any other computer then in existence, and won an award from General Curtis LeMay. Steve's methods are still in use today. This established Steve's credentials in making complex decisions.

1971. Spent a year developing a biologically consistent neural network to engage in unsupervised learning.

1974. Worked for two years with Dr. William Calvin at the University of Washington Department of Neurological Surgery, where Dr. Calvin was doing research into focal epilepsy. Dr. Calvin is now a noted author of several popular books on neuroscience that are available in bookstores everywhere.

1987. Presented a paper at the First International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Dan Diego, explaining how neurons could be instantly reprogrammed.

1990. Worked with Dr. Glen Warner to evaluate the effectiveness of immunological therapies for cancer sufferers using the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center's database. These proved to be every bit as effective as "slash and burn" methods for those patients who had opted for immunological treatments.

1997. Worked on a project for ASI Controls, a manufacturer of HVAC controllers. The ASI Controls products more closely approximate the operation of biological neurons than do any other commercial products, including PID control, yet were engineered without any knowledge of biological systems. This certainly shows that neurons are a pretty reasonable solution to our control system problems, and that logic is a good guide in dealing with them.

1999. Engineered an AC induction motor controller for ERAM, making extensive use of PID control to operate these motors under rapidly varying loads.

2000. Served as President of the Smart Life Forum, a special interest group bringing together advances in anti-aging, cognitive enhancement and sexual improvement to its older members.

2001. Came down with particular variety of Vagally Mediated Idiopathic Atrial Fibrillation and researched his condition to develop a cure in about 4 months. Then, applied these same methods to older friends and neighbors who had low daytime body temperatures.

2002. Continued inquiries into reprogramming strategies for the metabolic control system, and wrote this book.

Appendix F: Questions to ask your doctor

After reading this book, you will see that your doctor probably lives in some other dimension. Talking to him from the point of view presented herein will probably just cause a lot of problems. Instead, I recommend the Aristotelian method, wherein you ask some questions to see if you can lead him in this direction. Sometimes this works, but often it doesn't. Some questions you might consider include:

* What do you think underlies my various problems?

* What cause and effect chains do you think might connect external events to my problems?

* What does the medication you are giving me actually do?

* How can I continue to work on my problems if you suppress my symptoms with medication?

* What is the condition of my metabolic control system, e.g. temps, etc?

* How might problems with my metabolic control system be causing or contributing to my conditions?

* What might I be doing to propagate my own problems?

* What plans do you have to engineer a genuine cure rather than just stopgap treatments?

* What would you do if you had $10 million to solve my problems?

* Do you have any other patients with my problem but with 98.6oF body temperature?

Appendix G: Interpreting a temperature

The first task is to accurately measure your temperature. This is best done by mouth with a mercury thermometer. This can be done underarm, but takes 3-5 times as long to get a good reading.

An electronic thermometer can be used, but most read low. To get an accurate reading, first take a reading by following the instructions. Then, turn it off and leave it in for 15 minutes, turn it back on, and take a reading, which will be a little higher. Note this difference and apply it to all future readings taken according to the instructions. It is also good to compare its adjusted readings with a known good mercury thermometer.

Once you have read your temperature, you will want to estimate your set-point. To do this, you will need to add an adjustment if you feel cold, or subtract an adjustment if you feel warm. A starting point is to adjust 0.4oF if you feel a little warm or cold, 1.0oF if you feel VERY uncomfortable, 1.5oF if you are shivering or really don't feel like getting up. The goal is to get your set point to where it belongs, regardless of what your actual temperature is.

100oF

Upper limit of "normal" daytime temperature range.

99oF

Typical afternoon and peak morning temperature.

98.6oF

Normal daytime set point value.

98.1oF

Unstable point between nighttime and daytime temperature ranges.

98oF

Typical maximum temperature with Chronic Central Hypothermia.

97.2oF

Typical nighttime set point value.

96.something

Indicates mild hypOthyroidism.

95.something

Indicates serious hypOthermia that could be life threatening.

Appendix H: Glossary of Concepts

Ablation: A common treatment for atrial fibrillation, that destroys the pathway that communicates the presence of high blood pressure to the atrium, triggering it to flutter. While this stops the fibrillation, it does so at the cost of allowing higher blood pressure in the future, with all of the inherent hazards of high and rising blood pressure. Further, ablation does nothing for the associated symptoms. Alternative techniques to eliminate the causes of the high blood pressure are strongly recommended over ablation, including modern chelation methods to eliminate the heavy metals that hold plaques together, and restoring normal 98.6oF temperature so that solidified fats on your arteries will go back into solution in your blood.

Accuracy: The maximum error in a reading, e.g. the accuracy of a thermometer as a measure of how far off it can be. Mercury thermometers are usually the most accurate. See also Precision and Repeatability.

Adaptation: When you attempt to force your metabolic control system out of a local maximum to a more global maximum, it will initially fight such a change in any way that it knows how to. For example, if you repeatedly take small doses of most hormones, they will have less and less effect as your body learn to adapt to what you are doing, until it becomes impossible to use the hormone to make any large correction in the system. For example, your metabolic control system can utilize either melatonin or T4 to completely subvert your using T2 or T3 to reset your daytime body temperature. Hence, you must do this QUICKLY, before your body figures out how to do this. Failure to act decisively, e.g. by trying traditional Wilson's Syndrome therapy over weeks or longer, can make a patient completely uncorrectable.

Adrenal fatigue: Running out of adrenaline before your day is over, the common result of demand exceeding supply. This typically results in a "crash", where your temperature drops and you feel sleepy. When this happens 6 hours after drinking coffee, then it is probably just the result of that coffee wearing off. If you don't sleep warmly enough, you can use up the adrenaline that you make at night just keeping warm, so that you spend your entire day in a state of adrenal fatigue, a common mechanism behind Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). For more information, see .

Adrenaline: Your body uses adrenaline for medium-term (minutes) metabolic increase and heat generation (and thyroid hormones for long-term control, and peripheral circulation control for short-term control). Adrenaline also increases heart rate, which if not needed, will be compensated for with increased vagal system activity.

Algorithm: I method, formula, or recipe for action.

Anabolic: Refers to those life processes that build new cells.

Armour Thyroid: Little brown pills of dried and ground pig thyroid glands. Probably the most effective form of thyroid supplementation, which most people taking it would be better off by simply resetting their daytime body temperature up to normal.

Artificial Neural Network: A computer simulation of natural neurons to make an electronic system with biological characteristics, e.g. capable of unsupervised learning (learning through observation, rather than through rewards and punishments). As a side benefit, discovering what is necessary to make these systems works right tells us a lot regarding unobservable characteristics of biological neurons.

Atrial fibrillation: One of many conditions that starts out as atrial flutter, but where the atrium "recruits" the ventricle to rapidly beat along with it. Once this happens, your pulse, which you can observe at many points on your body, runs very rapidly. Various adjectives, such as paroxysmal, persistent, chronic, vagally mediated, adrenergically mediated, idiopathic, etc., may be applied to provide some characterization. This is also usually accompanied by one of several "packages" of symptoms that help to define what type it is. This book carefully avoids understanding the detailed process of atrial fibrillation, as it appears that in the vast majority of cases this is a really good thing that is working just as it should be. Instead, this book concentrates on why crazy control signals might be sent to the heart to cause it to determine that atrial fibrillation is the optimal mode of operation, and how it is possible to avoid such crazy control signals. There are probably at least a dozen conditions that are all called "atrial fibrillation", but there is SUCH a strong belief that these are all somehow the same that no one has yet done the cluster analysis to identify the various conditions. See .

Atrial flutter: Refers to a condition where an atrium beats very rapidly, rather than just as needed to push its contents into the associated ventricle. This condition can often be detected by holding the fingers of your right hand together, putting them high in your left armpit, holding your arm down to compress your fingers, and feeling a rapid beating in your finger tips. This reduces your heart's capacity to pump blood, but regardless of the control signals it receives, at least it will pump enough blood to keep you alive and conscious.

Atrium: Refers to either one of the two input chambers of the heart, whose job it is to slowly collect blood, then quickly transfer it to a ventricle to be pumped to the lungs or the body.

Axial temperature: Temperature taken by placing a thermometer in your armpit. This produces the same readings as if you take your mouth (oral) temperature, but takes much longer. However, this method has the advantage that it doesn't transmit diseases between multiple users.

Basal temperature: Your nighttime or sleeping temperature. This can be approximately measured by preparing a thermometer the preceding evening, and taking your temperature when you first become conscious enough to realize that you should put the thermometer into your mouth. Opinions regarding what the optimal value of this are in the range between 97oF and 98oF, with my own opinion being around 97.2oF.

Brain fog: A condition of impaired thinking ability, that even very healthy people typically have when they first wake up, that is very similar to being a little drunk. Even the least affected low temp people are typically functioning as though they already had one drink when they are at their highest 98.0oF temperature. This is most easily measured in apparently equivalent alcoholic drinks. Hence, a normal healthy person might have level-2 brain fog when they first wake up. A typical low temp person at 96.8oF, who feels like he has had a couple of drinks, would have level-3 brain fog (because what he thinks is no brain fog at 98.0oF is really at least level-1 brain fog).

Cardiac nerve: A nerve running from your brain to your heart, which gives your brain control over individual heartbeats. The test where excessive cardiac nerve activity is suspected is to look for significant variation in the time between successive heartbeats. I have been able to pull myself out of atrial fibrillation by concentrating on my heart and thinking beat...beat...beat, and after 3 or 4 beats, my heart has stopped fibrillating and is beating in step with my thoughts. My commands must have been sent via the cardiac nerve.

Catabolic: Refers to those life processes that destroy cells, in order to make room for replacements.

Cause and effect chain: The long chain of events that starts with some external event, e.g. having your tonsils removed, and leads to a long cascading sequence of events that eventually shows itself as something completely unrelated, e.g. diabetes 50 years later. While you can't put your tonsils back, the nearer the head of the chain that any treatment or cure operates, the more successful it will be and the broader its effect will be - to cure more of your problems. Where digestive problems are involved, this is often a good place to start, because they are typically higher in the chain and easier to understand than atrial fibrillation, and usually lead to the next higher link in the chain, e.g. vagal exhaustion, adrenal exhaustion, etc.

Chelation: The process of introducing agents into your body to grab onto toxins like heavy metals and hold them so that they can be eliminated from your body. Modern methods involve powerful agents that can be taken orally, and eliminate the toxins in your urine so that they can't be reabsorbed through your colon. See .

Chronic Central Hypothermia (CCH): "Chronic" = long term, "Central" refers to the central nervous system (CNS), and "Hypothermia" means low body temperature. This is sometimes referred to as Type II Wilson's SyndromeTM. Most people whose afternoon body temperatures are below normal have this condition.

Closed Loop Feedback control system: A system that makes small proportional changes rather than sudden large changes to maintain a stable desired result. Maintenance of 98.6F body temperature is via a closed loop feedback control system. These systems usually fail if any of their subsystems "hit the rail" or otherwise become nonlinear, necessitating some sort of fallback procedure, e.g. utilizing a heuristic control system approach, such as that used to maintain nighttime body temperature.

Cluster analysis: The process of looking at thousands of individual cases to group similar ones together. Many "conditions" like atrial fibrillation remain without cures because of the lack of adequate cluster analysis. Individual clusters can usually be cured, despite the fact that both individual cases and the group as a whole may remain "incurable". Often, cluster analysis is the best first step to curing your incurable condition. This will identify others with exactly the same condition as you have, so that you can pool your efforts and develop a cure for your specific condition, without diluting your efforts by mixing in people with different but similar-appearing conditions.

Compensation: The high frequency response of all feedback control systems must be limited in a particular way to avoid oscillating. If the "loop gain" falls faster than 12 dB/octave while having greater than unity gain, i.e. drops at a rate faster than the frequency rises, then the system will oscillate at whatever frequency that the system response falls faster than this rate. Compensation is the mechanism that rolls the high frequency off at this carefully calculated rate. Fortunately, our neurons are pretty good at adjusting their own compensation to avoid such oscillation, except in some diseases like Parkinson's Disease, whose tremors are at the loop response rate due to inadequate compensation.

Compensation period; sometimes called just "compensation": Every few days, your metabolic control system "retunes", making various adjustments in how it operates. This period can be anywhere from 1 to 10 days, with 3 days being typical. This restarts if anything really drastic happens, like resetting your body temperature, so be on the lookout for a problem several days later. By noting the strangest day, you will know in the future what your own personal compens