Parkinson's Patient Responds to Chiropractor's Care

November 9, 2000 -- According to a recent case study, a 60-year-old patient with symptoms of Parkinson's disease that included difficulty walking, slurred speech, memory loss and body tremors had less severe symptoms after three months of chiropractic care.

The study, in the October 23, 2000 issue of the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapy, is encouraging but not unprecedented. "Right now, the medical literature is keying in on head and neck trauma as a cause of Parkinson's," says Dr. Erin Elster, the study's author. Elster says many neurological disorders, such as Tourette's syndrome, migraines and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), have been linked to injuries of the neck. She says these injuries can cause damage to the nerves in the spine and interfere with normal nerve impulses.

In her private clinic in Boulder, Col., Elster has had encouraging results in caring for many patients with Parkinson's disease. The graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic is a specialist in adjusting the bones of the upper neck, a technique called upper cervical chiropractic. She says that this technique, in particular, can help with conditions that aren't generally associated with chiropractic, such as insomnia, allergies and Parkinson's disease.

"These are all things that are also responding to this procedure," says Elster. "The care here is not specific to Parkinson's. It's specific to the upper neck injury, getting that corrected so that it no longer interferes with neurological functioning."

Elster uses x-rays and digital infrared imaging to find misalignments in the bones of the upper neck. She then corrects the misalignments with adjustments to vertebrae in the neck. These misalignments, she says, can be a result of injuries to the head or neck that don't completely heal.

While a case study is not a scientific investigation, and this result does not necessarily mean that upper cervical adjustments can help all patients with Parkinson's, Elster says that her results could lead to more research into head and neck trauma as a cause of the disease.

 

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Vitamin D may help prevent some skin infections

Last Updated: 2008-10-13 13:01:52 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A small study suggests that supplementation with vitamin D can boost production of a protective chemical normally found in the skin, and may help prevent skin infections that are a common result of atopic dermatitis.

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic skin disease that affects 10 to 20 percent of children and one to three percent of adults. It is characterized by areas of severe itching, redness and scaling. Over time, chronic changes can occur due to constant scratching and rubbing.

The condition puts patients at increased risk for skin infections by Staph aureus and the herpes and small pox viruses and recent research suggests that this may relate to a deficit in the immune response -- specifically an inability to ramp up production of the antimicrobial protein cathelicidin.

In their study, Dr. Tissa R. Hata and colleagues, from the University of California San Diego in La Jolla found that vitamin D supplementation appears to correct the problem.

In the study, which involved 14 patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis and 14 normal controls, the researchers examined whether taking 4000 international units of vitamin D daily for 3 weeks could enhance cathelicidin expression in the skin.

An examination of skin samples showed that vitamin D use markedly increased cathelicidin levels in affected skin from dermatitis patients. Skin samples from controls and unaffected skin from dermatitis patients also showed increased cathelicidin expression but not to the extent seen in affected skin.

The researchers call for larger and longer studies examining the incidence and risks of infections in atopic subjects while on vitamin D supplementation "to see if this increase in cathelicidin is adequate in the prevention of infections in these patients."

SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, October 3, 2008.

 

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Mediterranean diet may also help stop diabetes

Last Updated: 2008-05-30 9:19:52 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - A Mediterranean diet rich in fruits and vegetables -- already known to protect against heart disease -- also appears to help ward off diabetes, Spanish researchers said on Friday.

The study published in the British Medical Journal showed that people who stuck closely to the diet were 83 percent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who did not.

"The new thing is that we have been able to assess adherence to a Med diet and the incidence of diabetes in people who were initially healthy," said Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, an epidemiologist at the University of Navarra in Spain, who led the study. "We didn't expect such a high reduction."

The World Health Organisation estimates more than 180 million people worldwide have diabetes -- a number likely to more than double by 2030 as more nations adopt a Western lifestyle.

Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 percent of all cases and is closely linked to obesity and heart disease. The condition accounts for an estimated 6 percent of all global deaths.

For their study the Spanish researchers recruited 13,000 former students at the university with an average age of 38 who had no history of diabetes. They tracked their dietary habits and health over an average four years.

The volunteers also initially completed a food frequency questionnaire to measure the kinds of food they ate. The list included questions on the use of fats and oils, cooking methods and dietary supplements.

People who strictly adhered to a Mediterranean diet full of vegetables, fish and healthy fats such as olive oil, and low in red meat, dairy products and alcohol had lower odds of diabetes.

Only about 40 people in the study developed diabetes but Martinez-Gonzalez added in a telephone interview that further study is needed to confirm the diet's protective effects.

But the fact that the protection appeared to extend to older people, smokers and volunteers with a family history of diabetes -- a group all the more prone to the disease -- shows the diet works, Martinez-Gonzalez said in a telephone interview.

"These higher risk participants with better adherence to the diet, however, had a lower risk of diabetes, suggesting that the diet might have a substantial potential for prevention," the researchers wrote.

 

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Low-carb diets may boost attention but blur memory

Last Updated: 2009-01-01 13:00:40 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Low-carb diets may make people's short-term memory a little foggy, but they could improve people's ability to focus and pay attention, new research hints.

The key to keeping one's smarts while dieting seems to be not to cut out carbs completely, Dr. Holly A. Taylor of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, the lead researcher on the study, told Reuters Health. "Low carbohydrate is OK; no carbohydrate is not," she said.

"Low-carb diets," Taylor added, "in the initial time period when they're actually no-carb diets, have the greatest potential to impair cognitive function because the brain uses glucose (sugar) as its primary fuel. The body breaks carbohydrates down into smaller components, including glucose, which the brain gets from the bloodstream, Taylor explained. So once carbohydrate stores are gone, the brain starts to starve.

Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is known to worsen brain function, while low-carbohydrate diets that force the body to use body fat for fuel, a process known as ketosis, have long been used to control seizures, which "suggests that they can profoundly influence brain functioning," Taylor and her team note in the journal Appetite.

To investigate how low-carb diets might impact thinking and mood, they had 19 women choose either a low-calorie, balanced diet recommended by the American Dietetic Association (ADA), or a low-carb diet in which they cut out carbohydrates completely for a week and then gradually reintroduced them to their diets.

The study participants completed several tests of mood and cognitive function 72 hours before they began the diets and 48 hours, one week, two week and three weeks after starting the diet.

The nine women who chose the low-carb diet fared worse on tests of their memory during the first week of the diet, when no carbohydrates were allowed, than the 10 women on the ADA diet. Once they started eating carbs again, the memory differences between the two groups disappeared.

"Even with a very small amount of carbohydrate, performance returned to normal," Taylor said. She pointed out that the diet allowed them to add just 5 to 8 grams of carbs a day, while the daily recommended intake of carbohydrates for people who aren't trying to lose weight is 130 grams.

After the first week, the low-carb group performed better on a test of sustained attention than the ADA group, and also reported feeling less confused.

Past research has shown that people do better on tests requiring attention and vigilance after a high-protein meal compared to a high-carb meal, and also feel less fatigued, the researchers note.

The current findings, Taylor said, show that "there's more to weight reducing diets than just losing weight."

SOURCE: Appetite, February 2009.

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Low vitamin D boosts depression risk in seniors

Last Updated: 2008-05-05 16:50:01 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older people with low blood levels of vitamin D and high blood levels of parathyroid hormone are more likely to be depressed, Dutch researchers report.

But it remains unclear whether these abnormalities are a cause or a consequence of depression, Dr. Witte J. G. Hoogendijk and colleagues from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam say.

Past studies have linked altered levels of vitamin D and parathyroid hormone with depression, but the relationship "has never been studied systematically," Hoogendijk and colleagues note. To investigate, they looked at 1,282 men and women aged 65 to 95 years participating in a long-term study of aging.

Nearly 40 percent of the men and 57 percent of women had low levels of vitamin D in their blood.

Among the 169 people found by self-report and diagnostic interviews to be suffering from minor depression, as well as the 26 with major depressive disorder, vitamin D levels were 14 percent lower than for people who were free from depression, the researchers found.

And blood levels of parathyroid hormone, which increase with vitamin D deficiency, were 5 percent higher in people with minor depression and 33 percent higher in those with major depression, relative to levels seen in seniors without depression.

There are a number of plausible ways that low vitamin D levels could influence mood, the researchers note, given that the vitamin plays a role in several neurological and hormonal processes.

If vitamin D deficiency is a cause rather than a result of depression, they add, this suggests supplementation with the vitamin and increased exposure to sunlight could help treat the mood disorder.

Long-term studies with repeated assessments are needed to explore the question of whether decreased vitamin D levels and increased parathyroid hormone levels precede depression or follow it, the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry, May 2008.

 

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Healthy lifestyle triggers genetic changes: study

Last Updated: 2008-06-17 8:35:32 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Comprehensive lifestyle changes, including a better diet and more exercise, can lead not only to a better physique but also to swift and dramatic changes at the genetic level, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

In a small study, the researchers tracked 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who decided against conventional medical treatment such as surgery and radiation or hormone therapy.

The men underwent three months of major lifestyle changes, including eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and soy products, moderate exercise such as walking for half an hour a day, and an hour of daily stress management methods such as meditation.

As expected, they lost weight, lowered their blood pressure and saw other health improvements. But the researchers found more profound changes when they compared prostate biopsies taken before and after the lifestyle changes.

After the three months, the men had changes in activity in about 500 genes -- including 48 that were turned on and 453 genes that were turned off.

The activity of disease-preventing genes increased while a number of disease-promoting genes, including those involved in prostate cancer and breast cancer, shut down, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research was led by Dr. Dean Ornish, head of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and a well-known author advocating lifestyle changes to improve health.

"It's an exciting finding because so often people say, 'Oh, it's all in my genes, what can I do?' Well, it turns out you may be able to do a lot," Ornish, who is also affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview.

"'In just three months, I can change hundreds of my genes simply by changing what I eat and how I live?' That's pretty exciting," Ornish said. "The implications of our study are not limited to men with prostate cancer."

Ornish said the men avoided conventional medical treatment for prostate cancer for reasons separate from the study. But in making that decision, they allowed the researchers to look at biopsies in people with cancer before and after lifestyle changes.

"It gave us the opportunity to have an ethical reason for doing repeat biopsies in just a three-month period because they needed that anyway to look at their clinical changes (in their prostate cancer)," Ornish said.

 

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Caffeine plus sugar can fool the brain, may cause hypoglycemia-attributed problems

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consuming caffeine and sugar together can trick the brain into believing that the blood sugar level is too low, even though it is above the threshold for hypoglycemia, say researchers in England.

Caffeine affects the brain in two ways, explains Dr. David Kerr, consultant physician at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital in Bournemouth, U.K. "It drops your blood flow in your brain and at the same time it tells the brain to demand more glucose (sugar). So it has this dichotomy, and the end result is that the brain thinks it's getting less sugar than it actually is... Now we're not talking about a huge dose of caffeine here, we're only talking about 2 to 3 cups of coffee."

Kerr led a team of researchers in a study of cerebral blood flow after participants ingested caffeine and sugar. The study involved 11 healthy volunteers, both male and female, aged between 23 to 64 years. The team found that caffeine decreases blood flow to the brain for up to five hours, and possibly longer.

In an interview with Reuters, Kerr explained that the brain is very sensitive to blood sugar levels because it requires a constant supply of glucose, yet it cannot store the energy source in the same way that muscle and liver can. Given the brain's sensitivity to blood sugar levels, a decreased blood flow to the brain coupled with a slightly lowered (but not hypoglycemic) blood glucose may cause the brain to perceive a false state of hypoglycemia. "It might explain why from time to time people have some bizarre symptoms which they used to (attribute) to hypoglycemia. Then when we started to measure sugar levels, we found these people weren't hypoglycemic," says Kerr.

Contrary to intuition, consuming a load of sugar actually decreases blood sugar levels. Although there is an initial rise in blood sugar levels, the body reflexively responds by producing insulin, which signals cells to take up sugar from the blood, ultimately resulting in a slightly lower than normal blood sugar level. "Now that might not seem to matter, but it could be important if you've got caffeine on board," explains Kerr. "The sort of scenario I could imagine would be young children taking a couple of (cans) of cola and a couple of cookies... which contains a lot of carbohydrates and a lot of caffeine, and you just wonder whether or not, a few hours after that, they might run into problems."

The "problems" Kerr speaks of are those normally attributed to hypoglycemia?shaking, sweating, intense hunger, difficulty in thinking properly, and impaired performance at work or with complex machines.

Insulin dependent diabetics are particularly prone for hypoglycemia because they need to match their insulin doses with their food intake. Hence, they must constantly monitor themselves for the signs of hypoglycemia, which can rapidly occur if they take too much insulin and not enough food. "The bottom line is that if an individual ingests caffeine it causes them to have much more in the way of symptoms of hypoglycemia, when the blood sugar levels fall. This is obviously important for people with diabetes, but it's also important for other individuals," he adds.

Kerr's research is preliminary, and he admits that more studies are needed, especially regarding the long-term effects of caffeine on the brain. "I'm just concerned that people are swallowing caffeine in huge amounts on a day-to-day basis and it has definite effects in the brain, and that needs to be looked at long term."

Hypoglycemia is a condition caused by abnormally low blood glucose. Symptoms usually develop when glucose concentrations fall below 45 mg/dL of blood. Normal glucose concentrations can range from 80 to 110 mg/dL.

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Drinking Milk May Ease Milk Allergy

Last Updated: 2008-11-10 16:13:44 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Milk may be a treatment for milk allergy. In a carefully controlled study, researchers from Johns Hopkins Children's Center and Duke University found that giving milk-allergic children milk in increasingly higher doses over time eased their allergic reactions to milk and even helped some of the children completely overcome their milk allergy.

The findings suggest that giving milk-allergic children milk "gradually retrains the immune system to completely disregard or to better tolerate the allergens in milk that previously caused allergic reactions," Dr. Robert Wood, senior investigator on the study and director of Allergy & Immunology at Hopkins Children's in Baltimore, noted in a statement.

"These results suggest that oral immunotherapy may be the closest thing yet to a 'true' treatment for food allergy," Wood added.

He and colleagues caution, however, that much more study is needed and they advise parents and caregivers not to try giving milk to children who are allergic to it without medical supervision.

The study involved 19 children, ages 6 to 17 years, with severe and persistent milk allergy. Over 4 months, 12 children received escalating doses of milk powder by mouth, whereas 7 received a placebo powder that was identical in appearance and taste to the real milk powder.

The findings of the study are reported in the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology.

At the beginning of the study, the children could tolerate only about a quarter of a teaspoon of milk, or about .04 ounces, on average. At the end of the 4-month study, both groups were given milk powder as a "challenge" to see what dose would cause an allergic reaction after the treatment.

The researchers found that children who had been receiving increasingly higher doses of real milk powder were able to tolerate an average of about 5 ounces of milk without an allergic reaction or only mild symptoms, such as itching in the mouth and minor stomach ache.

Placebo-treated children, on the other hand, were still unable to tolerate more than about a quarter teaspoon of milk without having an allergic reaction.

Milk tolerance in children treated with real milk powder continued to build over time, the researchers say. What's unclear, at the moment, is whether the children will maintain their tolerance to milk once they stopped consuming milk regularly.

"It may very well be that this tolerance is lost once the immune system is no longer exposed to the allergen daily," Wood said.

Milk allergy is the most prevalent type of food allergy and "we urgently need therapies that go beyond strict food avoidance or waiting for the child to outgrow the allergy," Wood said.

SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, online October 28, 2008.

 

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Chiropractic and Yoga: Perfect Partners?

As more North Americans turn to yoga, both as a physical and spiritual activity, they may discover chiropractic care has new-found benefits. On the one hand, it may help many beginners who are more prone to injuries, such as muscle strains resulting from yoga's sometimes difficult and strenuous stretches. On the other, chiropractic and yoga can work in harmony to increase proper posture, range of motion and flexibility: all crucial elements to both practices.

Dr. Dharmanidhi Sarasvati is well-acquainted with this relationship. Sarasvati was only in practice for three months in Sydney, Australia, when he decided to get out of a suit and tie and get into sweats for the office.

The switch might not have been necessary if he was only performing chiropractic adjustments, but Sarasvati was pioneering a new therapy called chiro-yoga. All day, he'd literally be on the floor with his patients, teaching them yoga postures and chiropractic exercises, while adjusting them at the same time.

Sarasvati started developing the chiro-yoga technique in the late 1980s, as a student at the Palmer College of Chiropractic. There, he conducted research on people with scoliosis, which is an abnormal curvature of the spine. The results showed people who received adjustments along with the exercises had the greatest success in correcting their curvatures -- more so than those who were only doing the exercises and substantially more so than those who were only receiving chiropractic adjustments. Sarasvati says chiro-yoga empowered patients to understand their own disfiguration, and allowed them to have more control over the correction of their spine.

"That was the most important thing," he says. "It took away their dependency on me. I was now a teacher instead of delivering something they couldn't do themselves."

Today, Sarasvati teaches yoga exclusively, running two schools in San Francisco. And while his chiro-yoga concept has never caught on, it's clear that people still have much to gain by practicing them both, separately.

Connecting mind and body

Chiropractor Michael Cohen runs a mind-body clinic in Toronto. He has been in practice for 10 years, and for last five he has integrated yoga into his patients' care. For Cohen the reason is simple: "At the root of all healing, you are re-linking mind and body. That's what it's all about."

As a practice, yoga is based on a philosophy of a wholeness and connection with yourself, others around you, as well as nature and the universe, and becoming aware of this union. Along with breathing and meditation, physical yoga promotes balance, strength and flexibility -- ultimately making you stronger, more grounded and less prone to pain and tension in your body.

"In yoga you're tuning your nervous system, you're tuning your body's muscle system and you're tuning your body's skeletal system. In chiropractic you're doing the same thing," says Cohen.

"In my office, because it's mind-body, we're also trying to tune a person's awareness back into their body and educate them about why something has gone wrong. Once a person understands the problem, they are much better at healing it."

Cohen says a typical plan of care in his office involves adjusting patients twice a week for the first three weeks, while recommending they attend yoga classes twice a week as well. That way, he says, they'll require 50% less care than normal.

"Not only will they heal faster, they'll learn a skill of how to keep themselves healthy and strong long after I'm out of the picture," he says. "You don't want to create someone who's reliant on you. You want to create someone who leaves your office and is elevated in their knowledge to take care of themselves."

While some people may chalk up yoga's growing popularity in North America to a passing trend, Cohen disagrees. "I think it's much more than a trend," he says. "It's a need being fulfilled, something which is mirroring the lack of connectedness between mind and body that living in our society generates."

Symbiotic relationship

Cohen's patients often find themselves at The Yoga Studio, where Helen Goldstein, the studio's director (a practitioner and teacher of yoga who studied under the famed Deepak Chopra), can offer first-person testimony to the benefits of chiropractic in yoga and vice versa.

Goldstein has received chiropractic care for nearly 20 years and has practiced yoga for even longer. She says the relationship between the two disciplines is symbiotic. "One of the things that happens with yoga is you become much more aware of your body, and I think the chiropractic adjustments work in a much deeper way," she says. "And after I've had an adjustment, I can really feel the difference when I practice yoga."

While finding professionals who are committed to both practices like Sarasvati and Cohen may be rare, Goldstein says more and more chiropractors are trying to learn. At the rate yoga and chiropractic are growing in popularity, more practitioners may soon be recognizing their potential to work together.

 

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Nutritional Support of Liver Detoxification Enzymes

Although the body is designed to eliminate toxins, it cannot always handle the overload present in today's environment. Toxin overload can lead to a variety of health problems such as chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel disease, muscle and joint pain, headaches, and allergy or flu-like symptoms. It is for these reasons that detoxification therapies are gaining popularity all over the world.

It was formerly believed that a water or juice fast was a preferred detoxification program. However, the modern-day realization that the body's detoxification systems are heavily nutrient-supported has made it clear that simple juice or water fasting is less complete and no longer the method of choice.

Dr. Jeffrey Bland and Dr. J. Alexander Bralley sought to determine the effectiveness of a nutritional intervention program for detoxification. Researchers chose and randomly divided 37 participants who complained of chronic health problems into either a test diet or placebo (control) diet group.

The test diet group was instructed to take a powdered meal supplement product containing various nutrients at levels suggested to positively influence detoxification. The placebo diet group was instructed to take a separate powdered meal supplement that contained the minimum Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of the same nutrients.

Upon completion of the 3-week study, Dr. Bland and Dr. Bralley stated in the Journal of Applied Nutrition that "[Detoxification] activity was enhanced in the test diet group, whereas in the placebo diet group it was not."

In addition, researchers requested that participants fill out a Metabolic Screening Questionnaire (MSQ)?a questionnaire used to evaluate the severity, duration, and frequency of symptoms associated with individual patient health problems. "The most significant reduction in symptoms [in the test diet group] occurred with 'tired eyes' and 'pain behind the eyes' headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, morning pain and stiffness, and chronic respiratory complaints."

Dr. Bland and Dr. Bralley concluded that a nutritionally-supported detoxification program decreases chronic symptoms and health complaints in participants.

J Appl Nutr 1992;44(2):15.

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Folate May Help Prevent Heart Damage

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pretreatment with high doses of folate, water-soluble vitamin B obtained from food, can reduce damage to the heart muscle that is caused when the blood flow is cut off, the results of an animal study suggest.

In the study, published in the current addition of Circulation, rats were treated with folate or placebo. After 1 week, the rats' left coronary arteries were blocked for 30 minutes. The blood normally carries oxygen to the heart muscle, and a sudden, severe blockage can cause a heart attack or an abnormal heart rhythm, conditions that can be fatal.

This was followed by 90 minutes of reperfusion in some animals or no reperfusion in others. Reperfusion is the restoration of the coronary blood flow to the heart muscle. Although it is necessary to preserve or restore heart function, it can paradoxically cause a disturbance in the function of the cells in the heart muscle, called reperfusion injury.

Folate-treated rats experienced significantly less functional impairment of the heart than did the placebo-treated animals, senior author Dr. David A. Kass, from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, and colleagues found. On reperfusion, smaller areas of dead heart muscle were also noted in the animals pretreated with folate.

Further analysis suggested that folate may have achieved these beneficial effects, in part, by maintaining levels of the high-energy phosphates ATP and ADP in the heart.

"We want to emphasize that it is premature for people to begin taking high doses of (folate)," Kass said in a statement. "But if human studies prove equally effective, then high-dose folate could be given to high-risk groups to guard against possible heart attack or to people while they are having one."

SOURCE: Circulation, April 8, 2008.

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