LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Parkinson's

Coenzyme Q10 could slow functional decline in Parkinson’s disease – (10-24-02)

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Coenzyme Q10 could slow functional decline in Parkinson’s disease

A few interesting comments on this article. First, the highest therapeutic dose used in this study was 1200 mg…which is a pretty high dose as far as what I use in my office. Unfortunately, CoQ10 is not cheap and this would be prohibitive for many patients unless insurance covered some portion of it (dream on…). Interestingly, despite the fact that this study showed a clear benefit (44% reduction in worsening of symptoms) the authors still suggest “it would be premature for a PD patient to take these high doses until a phase III clinical trial is done.” Do you think a Parkinson’s patient who knows that progressive is inevitable would like to wait?

Effects of Coenzyme Q10 in Early Parkinson Disease: Evidence of Slowing of the Functional Decline.

Read entire article here

Powerhouse Vitamin Plays Role in Alzheimer’s Dementia Diagnosis

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As far as I’m concerned, the medical dementia research strongly points to an oxidative stress/mitochondrial dysfunction model of neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s dementia and Parkinson’s disease.  The idea that we really don’t have any idea what causes it is just not true.

The likely reason why mainstream medicine hasn’t accepted this model is because it puts much  of the responsibility smack dab in the middle of the patient’s lap.  Genetics play a role, but it’s likely a small one.  Lifestyle is key to both preventing and causing Alzheimer’s dementia.

Pivotal in prevention is protecting my favorite organelle, the mitochondria.  This little factory within each of our cells generate energy in the form of ATP.  (Are we dredging up bad memories from high school biology yet?)  Since brain cells require extremely high amounts of energy, the mitochondria are critical for your brain cells to function correctly.  Not enough energy in the brain cells and they begin to break down and, when things get bad enough, your brain cells commit suicide (a process called apoptosis).

Too many suicidal cells in the neocortex or hippocampal regions of your brain and you begin to develop what we call Alzheimer’s dementia.  Unfortunately, by the time symptoms are noticed, the condition has been progressing for decades and a very large chunk of the brain cells in this region are already dead.

So how can we protect our brain from this suicidal pathway?

In two ways.

The first is to stop abusing the mitochondria in our brain cells.  The list of items that damage our brain is quite long, but should not drop any jaws.  Here are a few of the more dangerous risks:

After you’ve cleaned up the mess, the next thing to focus on is aspects of lifestyle that are well know to protect the brain.  The general recommendations that I promote for all chronic diseases remains the same and can be found by clicking here.  Besides lifestyle, there are numerous supplements that have some pretty good support for protecting the brain.  These include:

  1. Vitamin D
  2. Choline
  3. Magnesium threonate

However, there is another strong player.  Vitamin E.

And not your normal, run of the mill, cheap vitamin E supplement.  Vitamin E is actually a combination of 8 different forms–4 tocopherols and 4 tocotrienols.  Nature provides us with these multiple forms of tocopherols and tocotrienols.  Any good supplemental form of vitamin E is going to have a this mix of all 8 forms. Giving high levels of just one form of vitamin E can actually drive down levels of other forms of vitamin E in the bloodstream.

Vitamin E, as a blend of all 8 forms, is very protective to our body, especially the heart and blood vessels.  And if you protect your blood vessels, you’re protecting your brain.

But just how protective is it??

You might want to sit down for this one, or if you’re driving, pull over (actually…you shouldn’t really be driving trying to read this anyway..).

Diagnosing Alzheimer’s using a MRI alone is not without its problems and faults.  Currently, it is not used as a sole measure to make the diagnosis.  In this particular study, researchers looked at what happened when they added blood levels of these 8 vitamin E forms to an MRI for differentiating Alzheimer’s dementia from cognitive impairment from normal brains.  Here’s what they found:

  • MRI and plasma vitamin E measures increased accuracy to 98.2% for differentiating Alzheimer’s dementia from normal brains.
  • For  telling mild cognitive impairment from normal brains, the accuracy was 90.7%.
  • In addition, also identified 85% of individuals with cognitive loss who converted to Alzheimer’s dementia at 1 year follow-up (Tweet this).

Basically, the serum levels of the vitamin E family made the MRI diagnosis far more powerful, especially when it came to predicting who was going to progress to full blown Alzheimer’s dementia.  Isn’t your brain worth a little vitamin E?  Plan on spending $15-20 / month.  Do NOT buy the cheap forms with only alpha tocopherol–it may make things worse.

Your Brain on Stress; Is It Worth It?

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You want to protect your brain . We send our kids onto the field with a helmet. The Tour de France riders wear helmets. So why do we destroy it from the inside out?

Clearly we value the role of our brain in our everyday lives.  This is the reasoning for the aforementioned protective headgear and all of the hubub focused on protecting out collective brains from outside-in trauma.  Anyone who has ever spent some time in a neurological rehab hospital will tell you it’s not a pretty sight when the brain gets damaged.

As we age and become more thoughtful of protecting our brains, we begin to try to see what we can do to lower our risk of stroke such as lowering our blood pressure and eating more dark chocolate.  A stroke, much like head trauma, is an instantaneous event.  These seem to scare us into some type of action, whether it is wearing that helmet, passing up on the sparring match with worked up, 225 pound, 5% body fat Golden Gloves boxer or getting to the ER when your blood pressure spikes to 200/130.

But what about the more insidious, but equally destructive, slower paced damage to your brain?  The type of damage that ends up in Parkinson’s or Alzheimers dementia.

I have gone over ways to protect your brain in a previous blog post that can be read here.

But have I mentioned how damaging stress is to the brain?  Only a few hundred times, so I figure a little reminder is not a bad idea.  This particular study looked at how stress changed inflammation in the brains of mice.  Here’s what they found:

  1. Increased activation of nuclear factor κB.
  2. Upregulation of the proinflammatory enzyme nitric oxide synthase.
  3. Increased activity of the enzyme cyclooxygenase 2 (you know–COX-2– the one Vioxx and Celebrex block).
  4. Increased cellular oxidative/nitrosative damage.

Now, either your eyes have glazed over or you’re salivating at the thought of all this detailed biochemistry.  Either way, you need to understand that saying that stress is bad for us is some tongue-in-cheek comment that we can all laugh about.

Rather, it begins to destroy your brain, biochemical piece by biochemical piece, from the inside out.  So you would never think about sending your child out onto that football field without a helmet, but are you teaching them stress management tools so that they can protect their brain from the inside out as well?

Brain Supplements for Brain Power: Use This Type of Magnesium

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Brain power. We want to preserve it as we age, but are there brain supplements that can protect our brain?  One form of magnesium may be able to do just that.

Magnesium is one of those minerals that never seems to get the press it deserves.  It’s not as glamorous as CoQ10, doesn’t sound as fancy as N-acetylcysteine and isn’t found in high concentrations in milk like calcium.  Worse, if you take too much, you get the wonderful side effect of loose stools (which isn’t such a bad thing if you suffer from chronic constipation).

On the other side, magnesium is required in over 300 critical enzymes in the human body and is absolutely essential to our survival and to optimal health.  The problem is that many of us are deficient in magnesium.  Good food sources include:

  1. Nuts and seeds
  2. Whole grains
  3. Legumes
  4. Cocoa
  5. Halibut

Overall the number of Americans getting less than the recommended daily intake of magnesium is quite high.  Looking at the list above, you can imagine that these types of foods may not be commonplace on the average American dinner plate.

But the story gets more interesting.

Magnesium is very, very important for your brain power and should be on the list of important brain supplements.  But it’s just not easy to get most forms of magnesium to the brain because it just doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier very easily to enter the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF).  CSF is the fluid the brain floats in and the source of much of the nutrients the brain needs.  Even if you ramp up the magnesium levels in the blood to much higher levels, only a small percentage of this makes it to the brain.

Under normal circumstances, for good brain power, this is enough.  Magnesium can work alongside of phytonutrients and vitamins from our diet to counteract life’s daily stresses.  But what about those with more challenged brain power, like…

All of these groups may benefit from higher levels of brain supplements like magnesium in the brain.  What about someone with concerns over memory such as Alzheimer’s dementia?  You bet.  And maybe more so than the others on the list.

So how might we get more magnesium to the brain for these people who may benefit greatly from higher concentrations of magnesium for better brain power?

Turns out some researchers may have developed an answer in a specific form of magnesium called magnesium-L-threonate.  In this particular article,  researchers looked at the ability of magnesium threonate to increase magnesium levels in the CSF of rats.

Once they had established that it was effective, they looked at the ability of magnesium threonate to improve brain plasticity.  What is brain plasticity?  Remember how you thought you killed off all those brain cells in college, never to be replaced?  Sure, you’re liver and stomach lining can replace itself, but not the brain.

Wrong.  The brain has the ability to replace old, worn out cells.  This process is called plasticity and it is generally a good thing in the brain.

Overall, the researchers found that magnesium threonate had a strong ability to improve plasticity in the brains of these rats.  While this does not necessarily mean the same thing would happen in humans, I wouldn’t bet against it.

If you think you may fit into one of the categories that may benefit from some extra brain supplements, magnesium threonate may be for you.  The form is a little more expensive, but it might make the difference.

If you have tried magnesium threonate yourself, what kind of changes did you experience?

MITOCHONDRIAL DYSFUNCTION LEAD TO PARKINSON’S DISEASE – (12-09-04)

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XENOBIOTIC METABOLISM IN PARKINSON’S DISEASE

I would have to say that we have PD pretty close to wrapped up. There has been strong evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction leading to loss of dopaminergic neurons leading to the symptoms of PD. Once that is understood, all the protective factors and the contributing factors really make sense.

This study found a very, very strong difference in the ability to detoxify between PD patients and controls. Along the sulfation pathway, only 30% of PD patients were able to sulfate greater than 5% of a dose of acetominophen–that leaves 95% unsulfated and able to increase oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Controls? 84% were able to detoxify greater than 5%. So, a reduced ability to detoxify leads to increased oxidative stress from damaging toxins; increased oxidative stress leads to greater burden on the mitochondria and greater potential for damage. Xenobiotic metabolism in Parkinson’s disease — Steventon et al. 39 (7): 883 — Neurology –

Read entire article here

MELATONIN USAGE MAY AID NEURODEGENRATIVE DISORDERS – (12-29-04)

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Pro-oxidant activity of aluminum in the rat hippocampus: gene expression of antioxidant enzymes after melatonin administration

Maybe I’m just looking, but it seems like there’s been an awful lot of research on melatonin lately. I had previously just considered melatonin as a sleep aid, and did not consider it as an antioxidant. However, with the current literature supporting an oxidative stress/mitochondrial dysfunction etiology for seizures, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative disorders, I have begun to look at melatonin in a much different light with great therapeutic potential.

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HIGH LEVEL OF HOMOCYSTEINE RESULTS IN CHRONIC DISORDERS – (09-24-03)

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Gene–Diet Interactions in Brain Aging and Neurodegenerative Disorders

Once again, it is becoming more clear that another chronic degenerative condition (in this case Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s) are diseases of lifestyle. Elevated levels of homocysteine is being found to a major play in onset of these disorders. Of course this would mean that folic acid, B6 and B12 supplementation are essential for lowering your risk of these conditions. Ann Intern Med — Abstracts: Mattson 139 (5): 441.

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OXIDATIVE STRESS AND INFLAMMATION LEAD TO MITOCHONDRIAL DYSFUNCTION – (08-11-04)

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No evidence for heritability of Parkinson disease in Swedish twins. I know when I speak in the community on neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, there is usually surprise and quite a bit of resistance when I describe them as diseases of lifestyle. However, the research is pointing more and more towards (sound familiar??) oxidative stress and inflammation leading to mitochondrial dysfunction. Ultimately the cells cannot keep up with the damage being done to themselves and they commit suicide (a process called apoptosis). Lose too many cells this way and you start losing function. No evidence for heritability of Parkinson disease in Swedish twins — Wirdefeldt et al. 63 (2): 305 — Neurology –

read entire article here