Iris Bell MD PhD

Integrative Health For Natural Healing

DrBell

Dietary Improvements In Alzheimer’s Disease?

Diet, Getting Well, Integrative Medicine

Here’s a copy of the public press release on a new study in animals that offers promise for an adjunctive dietary aid for treating Alzheimer’s disease. This is not a cure, I hasten to point out, but it helps you function at the best level you can at the point in the disease that the dementia has reached:

Healthy diet could slow or reverse early effects of Alzheimer’s disease

Patients in the early to moderate stages of Alzheimer’s Disease could have their cognitive impairment slowed or even reversed by switching to a healthier diet, according to researchers at Temple University.

In a previous study [http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2009_2010/12/stories/alzheimers.htm], researchers led by Domenico Praticò, an associate professor of pharmacology in Temple’s School of Medicine, demonstrated that a diet rich in methionine could increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. Methionine is an amino acid typically found in red meats, fish, beans, eggs, garlic, lentils, onions, yogurt and seeds.

“The question we asked now as a follow-up is if, for whatever reason, you had made bad choices in your diet, is there a chance you can slow down or even reverse the disease or is it too late — that there is nothing you could do,” said Praticò.

As in the previous study, the researchers fed one group of mice a diet high in methionine and another group a regular, healthy diet. After three months, they split the group receiving the methionine-rich diet into two, with one group continuing the amino-heavy diet while the second switched to the healthy diet for an additional two months.

“At the end of the study, when we looked at these mice, what we found — very surprisingly — was that switching to a more healthy diet reversed the cognitive impairment that had built up over the first three months of eating the methionine-rich diet,” said Praticò. “This improvement was associated with less amyloid plaques — another sign of the disease — in their brains.

Pratico said that the cognitive impairment that had been observed in the mice after three months on the methionine-rich diet was completely reversed after two months on the healthier diet, and they were now able to function normally.

“We believe this finding shows that, even if you suffer from the early effects of MCI or Alzheimer’s, switching to a healthier diet that is lower in methionine could be helpful in that memory capacity could be improved,” he said.

Pratico stressed that this was not a drug therapy for curing MCI or Alzheimer’s, but that it did demonstrate that a lifestyle change such as diet can improve some of the impairments that have already occurred in the brain.

“What it tells us is that the brain has this plasticity to reverse a lot of the bad things that have occurred; the ability to recoup a lot of things such as memory that were apparently lost, but obviously not totally lost,” he said.

Pratico also emphasized that the researchers believe that in addition to switching to a healthy diet, patients diagnosed with MCI or Alzheimer’s also need a regiment of physical as well as mental exercises.

“This combination won’t cure you, but we believe, as we saw in this study, that it will be able to slow down or even possibly reverse the effects on the cognitive impairment,” he said.

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The study, “Normalization of hyperhomocysteinemia improves cognitive deficits and ameliorates brain amyloidosis of a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease,” is being published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (http://www.fasebj.org/). It was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Copies of this study are available to working journalists and may be obtained by contacting Preston M. Moretz in Temple’s Office of University Communications at pmoretz@temple.edu.

Myo-Inositol for Lung Cancer Prevention?

Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Diet, Vitamins

The B vitamin-related natural substance, myo-inositol is in the news lately. Now new research suggests that changes in a set of genes that are active in smokers who go on to develop lung cancer might offer early detection and even prevention treatments. Once cancer is initiated, the factors that promote it can differ from those that initiate it.

In any event, the gene involved is called PI3K, which interacts with inositol. Patients in a trial of inositol for lung cancer prevention apparently showed reductions in the activation of the PI3K. So, inositol may tell the genetic and cellular changes that precede full expression of lung cancer to stand down and halt their progression toward disease.

Sounds worth exploring.  As always, who knows if inositol would have actual clinical benefits and low risk, and it is up to each person at risk of cancer or with cancer now to decide at this point in time if the current unknowns about inositol are worth dealing with sooner rather than later (as usual, myo-inositol is widely available over the counter in health food stores). This is worth a discussion with your doctor, though, if lung cancer (or some other cancers where inositol might be helpful) is a concern for you.

Here’s the whole abstract about this latest study:

Sci Transl Med. 2010 Apr 7;2(26):26ra25.

Airway PI3K Pathway Activation Is an Early and Reversible Event in Lung Cancer Development.

Gustafson AM, Soldi R, Anderlind C, Scholand MB, Qian J, Zhang X, Cooper K, Walker D, McWilliams A, Liu G, Szabo E, Brody J, Massion PP, Lenburg ME, Lam S, Bild AH, Spira A.

Section of Computational Biomedicine, Department of Medicine and Pulmonary Center, Boston University Medical Center, Boston, MA 02118, USA.

Abstract

Although only a subset of smokers develop lung cancer, we cannot determine which smokers are at highest risk for cancer development, nor do we know the signaling pathways altered early in the process of tumorigenesis in these individuals. On the basis of the concept that cigarette smoke creates a molecular field of injury throughout the respiratory tract, this study explores oncogenic pathway deregulation in cytologically normal proximal airway epithelial cells of smokers at risk for lung cancer. We observed a significant increase in a genomic signature of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway activation in the cytologically normal bronchial airway of smokers with lung cancer and smokers with dysplastic lesions, suggesting that PI3K is activated in the proximal airway before tumorigenesis. Further, PI3K activity is decreased in the airway of high-risk smokers who had significant regression of dysplasia after treatment with the chemopreventive agent myo-inositol, and myo-inositol inhibits the PI3K pathway in vitro. These results suggest that deregulation of the PI3K pathway in the bronchial airway epithelium of smokers is an early, measurable, and reversible event in the development of lung cancer and that genomic profiling of these relatively accessible airway cells may enable personalized approaches to chemoprevention and therapy. Our work further suggests that additional lung cancer chemoprevention trials either targeting the PI3K pathway or measuring airway PI3K activation as an intermediate endpoint are warranted.

Inositol Related Product for Better Quality of Life in Breast Cancer Survivors

Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Vitamins

Here’s a recent abstract on a study suggesting that an inositol product might improve quality of life for breast cancer survivors.  Myo-inositol is a lesser known type of B complex vitamin that the body can produce from glucose, but can be found in some nutritional supplements.

J Exp Clin Cancer Res. 2010 Feb 12;29:12.

Efficacy of IP6 + inositol in the treatment of breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy: prospective, randomized, pilot clinical study.

Baci? I, Druzijani? N, Karlo R, Skifi? I, Jagi? S.

Department of Surgery, General Hospital Zadar, 23000 Zadar, Croatia.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Prospective, randomized, pilot clinical study was conducted to evaluate the beneficial effects of inositol hexaphosphate (IP6) + Inositol in breast cancer patients treated with adjuvant therapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with invasive ductal breast cancer where polychemotherapy was indicated were monitored in the period from 2005-2007. Fourteen patients in the same stage of ductal invasive breast cancer were involved in the study, divided in two randomized groups. One group was subjected to take IP6 + Inositol while the other group was taking placebo. In both groups of patients the same laboratory parameters were monitored. When the treatment was finished, all patients have filled questionnaires QLQ C30 and QLQ-BR23 to determine the quality of life. RESULTS: Patients receiving chemotherapy, along with IP6 + Inositol did not have cytopenia, drop in leukocyte and platelet counts. Red blood cell counts and tumor markers were unaltered in both groups. However, patients who took IP6 + Inositol had significantly better quality of life (p = 0.05) and functional status (p = 0.0003) and were able to perform their daily activities. CONCLUSION: IP6 + Inositol as an adjunctive therapy is valuable help in ameliorating the side effects and preserving quality of life among the patients treated with chemotherapy.

Tea for High Blood Pressure? Hibiscus Tea…

Diet, Holistic Medicine Updates

tea in cupStudies have been accumulating to show that drinking a few cups of hibiscus tea daily can significantly lower elevated blood pressure in people with pre- and mild hypertension. In a paper that appeared in the Journal of Nutrition in February 2010, Tufts University researchers reported an average drop of over 7 mm HG for hibiscus versus only 1.3 mm Hg for placebo in these types of hypertensive people.  The effect was stronger for systolic than for diastolic blood pressure. This is a potentially mild and helpful adjunct for treatment of this common and dangerous condition. Talk with your doctor, monitor your blood pressure, and see if this is right for you.

The great thing about hibiscus tea is that unless you are allergic to it, it is a benign step to take to help in your overall program of controlling your blood pressure. Yes, diet, exercise, salt avoidance, smoking cessation, and certain natural supplements can all help lower elevated blood pressure too.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Evaluating Your Progress

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

What to Look For

doctorandpatienttalkingIn conventional (local, body part) medicine, the changes that you should expect are control of symptoms or problems in whatever local body part the treatment is targeting. Other changes are typically side effects, undesirable changes in other body parts such as indigestion or blurry vision or dizziness or headaches.

In whole systems care, the changes that you should expect are both general or global and local. Globally, your overall energy and sense of well-being should improve. In general, your dynamics as a system, your resilience or ability to bounce back from symptom flares, minor stressors, and major life events, should improve. With more resilience, the duration of symptom flares should become shorter and less severe in intensity. What shifts is the tendency to express the symptoms, rather than the momentary expression itself.

Pattern of Local Systems

The patterning of the local symptoms that concerned you originally should become less frequent and/or less severe and perhaps even stop happening over time. Additional local symptoms that you had then, but had forgotten to mention in your initial evaluation, may also be lessened or gone.

Furthermore, you may have observed temporary re-emergence of old symptoms that you had forgotten for a while, old behaviors or old physical symptoms. Perhaps you came in for asthma, but then in the course of treatment you notice fewer and less severe asthma attacks but a return of diarrhea that you had many years before. Eventually the diarrhea will fade out, perhaps replaced for a while with a skin rash or an increased tendency to catch colds (a less severe form of disease than your chronic illness flares), which will itself gradually end with the passage of more time.

Course of Healing

In short, the course of healing reveals the wisdom of the body as an intact indivisible system in shifting the manifestations of disease back in time, as though rewinding a stored memory in a tape program and in moving the manifestations from upper body to lower body and from more essential organs (heart, lung, kidneys) to less important organs (skin, mucous membranes). You, as a system, change how you live in your world.

In summary, you are an indivisible living network system that is currently manifesting a chronic disease. The most effective treatment for you is a system-oriented package of options that speak to your highest levels of organization as a system.

Different Treatment Options in Holistic Healing

Holistic Medicine Updates

It is always important to do your homework about any provider to whom you entrust your health and well-being and consider the different treatment options that are available with regard to holistic healing.

Mind-Body Treatment Options

You can support these first two components of your care by adding whatever form(s) of mind-body approaches appeal to you (e.g., journaling, affirmations, guided imagery, hypnosis, biofeedback). These approaches are often very helpful to support your healing intention by reprogramming your subconscious mind, especially for people who find it easy to generate imagery and/or who are verbal, depending on the method chosen.

Some research suggests that there are individual differences in personality types in terms of who benefits from specific types of mind-body interventions. For example, absorption is a genetically-determined trait involving openness to new experiences, high intrinsic spirituality, high hypnotizability, and the capacity to lose oneself in an inner or outer experience (e.g., a sunset or a book or movie).

In people with chronic vascular headaches such as migraine, those who scored high on a questionnaire for absorption responded better to guided imagery than to biofeedback. In contrast, their peers who scored low on the same absorption scale responded better to biofeedback than to the imagery.

These observations suggest that we may someday be able to steer people with more certainty to the specific types of a treatment option that have the best chance of helping them as individuals. Genes determine personality traits, which means that personality reflects real biological differences in the brain and body from one person to another. For now, it appears likely that people with high or low trait absorption may need different types of treatments to maximize their recovery from chronic disease.

Structural/Manual Manipulation Treatment Level of Options

Especially if you have any musculoskeletal problems, the manual manipulation methods make great sense as well at this point. Whole systems of care such as osteopathy have a philosophical approach to the person that inherently views the body as comprised of interconnected, interrelated pathways. Getting the physical body into alignment by a manual manipulation method of treatment is permissive for healing throughout the system overall. Subtle energy flows better; physical discomforts resolve.

Constitutional and energetic treatments are particularly complementary with manual manipulation treatments and vice versa – that is, positioning the physical body pathways properly enables constitutional/energy treatments to move past physical blocks and exert their best effects, whereas constitutional/energy treatments can help the physical body hold the healthier positioning of soft tissue and bones from manual manipulation treatments longer.

Preventive and Biochemical Levels of Options
Finally, make sure that you are doing at least the fundamentals of supporting your physical body through the preventive level of options — regular exercise, health-promoting diet, and nutritional supplements as appropriate to your age and condition. A good multivitamin/mineral supplement, for example, is a basic for most people. Evidence suggests that such supplements are especially important for people with various chronic diseases to reduce their susceptibility to acute infections and to later life complications.

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