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July 14, 2013
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's prevention
Hi ,
A diagnosis of either Alzheimer's or Parkinson's is devastating. Forgetting everything or not being able to walk or talk pretty much messes up any semblance of your normal life. Yet there is no effective treatment offered by medicine for these diseases. There are currently about 1 ½ million folks with Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's is growing at the rate of half a million new cases each year.
Both of these diseases are basically caused by an inflammation of the brain - Alzheimer's in the memory centers and Parkinson's in the motor control centers. This inflammation causes the cells to function badly and that creates the symptoms we notice.
There can be a wide number of triggers for this inflammation, many of which are a direct result of our modern lifestyle:
Pesticides
Heavy metals like mercury and cadmium
Petroleum solvents like paint and glue
Pasteurized milk and gluten from grains
Artificial sweeteners like aspartame
Excess iron in the body
Vitamin D, B, folate and DHA deficiencies
Head trauma
Brain blood flow problems - atherosclerosis
Metabolic / blood sugar issues
Gut inflammation via the gut - brain connection
Food allergies and chemical sensitivities
Pharmaceutical drug reactions and sensitivities
Surgery anesthesia
These triggers can cause a variety of things to go wrong with the nerve cells, everything from cell death, to getting clogged with tangles of nerve tissue, to not enough energy production, to glued blockages of plaque.
To stop these processes you need some powerful anti-inflammatory substances that don't stop normal healthy inflammation. Healthy inflammation - what's that? Any time your body gets infected or injured, it is the inflammatory chemicals released by the injury or cell death from the infection that stimulate the immune system to rush to the area and begin the healing process. All that rushing creates the redness, swelling, heat, and pain we experience as the immune cells attack the bad guys and eat up the damaged tissue to make way for new healing tissue to be laid down.
We absolutely need inflammation to be healthy, but in the right amounts and at the right time. Sometimes the immune system is not able to clear out the offending stuff. It keeps trying even though it fails and this becomes chronic inflammation. Examples of this is the accumulation of fat in obesity that triggers insulin resistance, the accumulation of protein tangles in neurological diseases that cause Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and the accumulation of apolipoprotein B that triggers cardiovascular disease. Because the immune system can't get rid of these offending substances, it keeps producing irritating chemicals, called cytokines, that drive the immune cells crazy and in that craziness they do even more damage.
So we want a magic elixir that blocks the crazy-making chemicals without blocking the normal healing inflammation. Unfortunately pharmaceutical anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin block the normal healing pathways. That is why they are dangerous to tissues that regularly undergo a lot of damage and healing turnover of cells such as in the gut, kidneys, and liver.
Fortunately there has been a ton of research looking for a better anti-inflammatory drug. Typically, research begins with testing natural substances for their effectiveness. Then they try to duplicate this synthetically to produce a patent medicine. In the last 20 years, two natural substances have consistently proven to be powerful anti-inflammatory remedies: curcumin and resveratrol. But as of this time they have not been successfully re-created synthetically.
I say, "Who cares? Let's use the natural substances!" Pharmaceutical companies care because they can't make big profits off natural substances because they can't patent them and have exclusive rights to them. I am not willing to wait just so they can make more money.
Curcumin has literally thousands of studies behind it now. Some of its beneficial effects are:
Inhibits the protein plaque that causes Alzheimer's
Prevents LDL cholesterol oxidation
Inhibits HIV
Protects against liver and lung damage
Enhances wound healing
Alleviates brain oxidative stress and cell death
Modifies the expression of over 700 genes
Suppresses brain inflammation, MS, and Myocardial Infarction
Suppresses rheumatoid arthritis and tumor formation
Suppresses symptoms of type 2 diabetes
Prevents nerve protein clumping, which causes Parkinson's
Curcumin has one major drawback - it is almost impossible to digest it. You only absorb 1-2 % of the herb when you take it in a powdered capsule form. To get enough to be therapeutic, you need 6 to 10 grams a day, or 12 to 20 big capsules a day. The absorption can be increased 10 fold by creating an emulsion of the herb in certain fatty acids that will carry it into the body. This is the technique used by Apex  in the Tumero Active product that I use each morning. Even though it seems expensive at $49 a bottle, once I figured in the absorption difference, it actually comes out to be less than half the price of the cheapest capsule form I could find.
Resveratrol has a similar list of amazing health benefits, except that it operates by completely different pathways. Resveratrol has the added benefit of being considered the closest thing we have at this point to a fountain-of -youth drug. Our cells are preprogrammed to be able to replace themselves for healing purposes only so many times. This is controlled by things called telomeres that attach to the end of each strand of our genes. Every time the gene replicates as the cell splits in two to form a new cell, the telomeres get shorter. Finally the telomere runs out and the gene can't replicate any more. Resveratrol has been found to lengthen the telomeres giving the cells a longer life.
My tactic is to use both the curcumin and the resveratrol (as Tumero Active and Resvero Active liquids) to fight inflammation in my body every morning. The anti-aging properties are just a bonus. Because it is almost impossible to avoid all the triggers for excess inflammation in our modern society, we need a daily method for decreasing inflammation in our bodies.
Additional nutrients for fighting any brain inflammation problems, as well as inflammation anywhere else in the body, are vitamin D3 and Omega 3 oils. Both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases are consistently associated with low levels of vitamin D3 in the blood. Vitamin D3 is actually a hormone that directly regulates the immune system. Ideal levels for a healthy adult are 50 to 70 ng/dl, and if you have any form of auto-immune disease like Hashimoto's thyroiditis, or psoriasis, or rheumatoid arthritis, or chronic colitis, that number should be 90 ng/dl. That means taking 2000 to 5000 IU of vitamin D3 per day - 10,000 for autoimmune folks.
Omega 3 oils are converted in the body to anti-inflammatory chemicals, while omega 6 oils get converted into inflammatory chemicals. The body should have an even balance of these oils inside, but our modern diet has caused a huge imbalance with 20 times more of the omega 6 oils frequently found in folks. This is because of the consumption of vegetable oils - all omega 6 based. Don't use vegetable oils if at all possible. Stick with coconut, avocado, and olive oils. Omega 3 oils are found mostly in fish. Some plants have a form of omega 3 (like flaxseed), but human bodies can't convert it into a form we can use. We can however, feed it to chickens that can convert it and then eat their eggs.
Of particular value to the brain is the omega 3 oil DHA. DHA is the basic building block our brains are made from. So if you are trying to either grow or heal a brain, you need plenty of DHA. A fabulous source of DHA is cod livers, which Ellen and I have become fond of once I found them in an import store. Imported from Norway, they come in a can like sardines. For some reason every time I mention how good they are to patients, they all get grossed out. A good alternative is the Ultra D 5000 which I generally recommend for osteoporosis patients. It has the DHA in it as well as the high doses of the vitamin D we need.
The brain also likes an energy source besides just sugar. The brain will also use triglycerides from fats as an energy source. One of the best and most easily used are the fats from coconut oil. Fats provide a slow burning, even source of energy, instead of the fast burning ups and downs of energy from sugar.
So to recap, to bring down brain inflammation we want to use the turmeric extract curcumin and resveratrol. We need vitamin D3 and DHA plus B vitamins and folate. That is what we want to add. But these will have little effect if we don't also remove the inflammatory triggers causing the problems. We need to avoid the food poisons, pesticides, heavy metals, petroleum solvents, vegetable oils, dairy and gluten (grains of all sorts). We need to be on a healthy diet lifestyle that is high in vegetables and proteins that are balanced in omega 3 and 6 without sugar or simple carbs.
This is all very doable, but it takes motivation as it eliminates almost all fast food, junk food, and packaged foods. Your desire to be able to remember your loved ones and to be able to walk and speak has to be greater than your desire for the poisonous foods that our culture has come to love so much. The win has to be greater than the loss or you won't stick to it, because this is a forever lifestyle change. It is all about what is important to you.
Right now the cost of this lifestyle is the loss of convenience. Most every food you love can be recreated using healthy alternatives. All the folks that tasted my recent cupcakes will attest to how well you can recreate food favorites. But until enough people switch to this lifestyle to create market demand, we have to make what we want ourselves, from scratch. Eventually the market will catch on and provide us with healthy foods, but it is not there yet.
My health can not wait. What I do today will affect my health 10 to 20 years from now. If I wait till I have symptoms, it will be too late to do anything about it. The "live for today" philosophy has filled our care facilities with damaged people that will never have quality of life again. I don't want to end up that way - do you?
Take care,
David
Ultrasound Physical Therapy
Now available in the office
Tuesdays and Fridays
How to find us -
Our address is 9725 Fair Oaks Blvd.
Finding the new location is very easy. Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block. We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop. If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.
If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek. It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset
office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3
more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left. Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends. We are on the left.
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