The brains of Parkinson's patients tell us some of the secrets of the disease at autopsy...
"For History must be our deliverer, not only from the undue influence of other times, but from the undue influence of our own, from the tyranny of environment and the pressure of the air we breathe".
Acton. Lectures on Modern History.
What Parkinson's screams at us in autopsy, once we cross the last border. The same thing prevents the disease, controls the symptoms, slows its progression... It's the same thing! There are hardly any differences, except for nuances. It is the final scene of a drama that lasts a lifetime: oxidation, inflammation... vulnerable points that are not reinforced...
The panorama, like battlefields or cities destroyed by war...
For 50 years we have walked lost through the Parkinsonian maze without knowing where we were or why we were locked up there. But that has changed thanks to the increasingly luminous and enlightening books and studies of dozens, hundreds of brilliant and courageous neurologists, as well as other neuroscience experts (Ahlskog, Coimbra, Shults, Birkmayer, Karobath, Costantini, Aoyama, Suzuki, Monti, Perlmutter, Sechi, González Maldonado, Marjama Lyons, Mandel, Hurni, Braak, Fahn, etc.). Hundreds of old studies (Jenner, McGeer, Mattson, Coimbra, Powers...) tell us what Parkinson's is and thousands of more recent studies (Alberts, Suzuki, Marashly, Monti, Schaffner...) show us everything we need to have a fairly clear view of the puzzle solved, although still with our eyes slightly closed. Important details are missing, but the essential is already known. As long as we do not turn our backs on Nature and leave aside our arrogance to recognize that we had entered "the world of Parkinson's" in a block in a dead end or also endless (we could continue on the current path 100 or 200 years without finding anything significant to improve the daily life of patients and family caregivers. I would bet my life on it).
The last frontier to which I refer in the title is death. The autopsies they have done on the brains of deceased Parkinson's patients not only confirm everything we already know, but seem to point us in the same direction. And they have recently been confirmed with brain-scanning techniques when the patients are still alive. The studies that have been carried out "post mortem" tell us that in the brains of Parkinsonians there was (especially in the famous and vulnerable "sustantia nigra") a brutal oxidation and inflammation, as well as an alteration of everything: mitochondria, glutathione, coenzyme Q10, NADH, etc. Multiple factors, multiple deficiencies. A growing chaos over the years because it is not corrected, but rather gasoline is poured into the fire:
1) many traces point to an intense OXIDATION (Jenner already said it since 1992), that's why so many antioxidants prevent the disease and slow down or reduce the severity of the symptoms (folate or vitamin B9 prevents Parkinson's by 49% and regulates the severity of the symptoms by reducing the level of the neurotoxic and still underestimated homocysteine);
2) very clear signs of NEUROINFLAMATION (as indicated by McGeer, a world-renowned neurologist on Alzheimer's disease). The traces of this inflammation are the activation of microglia and the remains of pro-inflammatory molecules: cytokines, interleukin, etc (Block 2007, McGeer 2008). Those who have taken non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin prevent Parkinson's by 46%, as well as natural anti-inflammatory drugs such as ginger, curcumin (which crosses the barrier that protects the brain), the polyphenols of green tea, the omega 3 DHA (Yamamoto 2005, 47% less dementia according to Schaffer 2006), etc. Alpha-synuclein plays an important role in this inflammation (Zhang 2005, Lee 2008, Reynolds 2008, Su 2009). Magnesium and green tea protect the nervous system and prevent the aggregation of both iron- and spontaneously produced alpha-synuclein (Golts 2002);
3) neurotoxic accumulations of IRON (Antonini 1993) and ALUMINIUM (Yasui 1992). Possibly the lack of essential vitamins to correctly metabolize iron - such as thiamin - produce these accumulations. Green tea and alpha lipoic acid are chelators (antidotes, eliminators) of iron (Koonyosying 2018, Tai 2020). Autopsies or laser analyzers detect accumulations of iron in the brain, especially in the basal ganglia and substantia nigra (Dexter 1991, 1992, Good 1992, Linert 2000). The iron produces a greater oxidation that feeds back and enters a vicious circle that would explain the progressive worsening of the disease (Linert 2000). In parkinsonian autopsies there are aluminum deposits in the basal ganglia and gray substance (Perl 1982, Yasui 1991, 1992). Its "antidote" or chelator is magnesium, so deficient in the current average westernized diet and so worn out by the stress of modern life (magnesium is the anti-stress mineral that regulates the necessary and dangerous cortisol), that aluminum and other heavy metals ravage the brain. Turmeric is also a lethal enemy of aluminum (Laabdar 2016).
4) an almost total lack of GLUTATHION (Perry 1982, 1986, Pearce 1997, Sian 1994, Arakawa 2007), the main antioxidant of "sustantia nigra". It is not rare, since in the advanced stages of the disease there is only 2% left (Adams 1991). Vitamin C is the most important external antioxidant to protect the neurons of the hydroxyl groups, so linked to Parkinson's. To cross the blood-brain barrier as if it were glucose, the membrane of the neuron and that of the mitochondria is converted into dehydroascorbic acid (the oxidized form of the prodigious vitamin C) that would have to be brought back to life - reduced - by glutathione. But there is a serious problem: there is hardly any left. In autopsies, no trace of glutathione has been found in the substantiantia nigra;
5) And pathologists see the brain of Parkinson's patients as an old battlefield: damage to mitochondria in complex I of cellular respiration (Parker 2008); Lewy bodies and alterations of alpha-synuclein (Zhang 2005, Lee 2008, Reynolds 2008, Su 2009), etc.
The "father" of modern medicine, Dr. William Osler referred to Parkinson's more than a century ago as an accelerated aging of the brain. In another powerful image, someone spoke as if the brain was on fire and had to be "put out" with antioxidants and anti-inflammatories (Wang 2006, Sanders 2013), liver protectors (Lombard, Marjama Lyons), probiotics for the "second brain" (Gershon, Bercik, Tillish, Scheperjans)...
I recommend watching the documentary "The Mystery of Alzheimer's", available in Spanish on Youtube. And read a lot between the lines or watch between the frames... because the world around Alzheimer's and Parkinson's is very similar.
The brains of Parkinson's patients in autopsies are destroyed like an old battlefield, like a ravaged city. But as the scientific police, as detectives, we are reconstructing what has happened... so we will know how to avoid it. But with the "weapons" of Nature (EGCG, allicin, quercetin, resveratrol, curcumin, magnesium, melatonin, vitamin D3, zinc, selenium, EPA and DHA…).
A profound revolution is taking place in the all-too-quiet official world of Parkinson's (Dorsey 2018), thanks to brave neurologists like these:
Fullard and Duda in 2020: A Review of the Relationship Between Vitamin D and Parkinson Disease Symptoms.
Lv et al. in 2020: The relationships of vitamin D, vitamin D receptor gene polymorphisms, and vitamin D supplementation with Parkinson’s disease.
By the way, we still don't give patients taking levodopa the vitamins B6, B9 and B12 to control the neurotoxic homocysteine, as neurologist Ahlskog recommends in his books. We have been waiting 20 years for someone to make that decision.... Even a politician could do it.
One of the problems that I find both in the official world and in the "complementary and alternative" world is that everything has become very complex, a real jungle.
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If I had to choose four supplements just to give them to my father (unfortunately he passed away in 2012 after 18 years of wasting - when the necessary knowledge already existed, but we didn't know it):
- VITAMIN B1 or Thiamin. The studies are interesting (Smithline 2012, Luong and Nguyen 2013, Costantini 2013, 2016). It seems to me to be the most promising treatment today, because of the strength of the studies and the large number of patients treated. The existence of numerous videos showing patients before and after thiamine use is unique and unprecedented. Like the next two, the oral route is very flexible and convenient for patients all over the world.
- VITAMIN D in high doses (minimum, the 1200 IU per day of the Suzuki study in 2013, maximum, from 5000 to 10000 IU per day recommended by the neurologists Coimbra in their "protocol", Perlmutter in a 2013 article or Hiller in his 2018 study);
- VITAMIN B2 in doses of 30-30-30 (total daily 90 mg), according to the Coimbra study in 2003. Despite the problems with the way the study was conducted. But 44-71% motor improvement in 3-6 months and 3 patients, 100%. And since 2003 no one has dared to continue the study...
- And finally, something else: in my case, I would choose strong doses of VITAMIN C (Fahn used 3 grams daily for a year in his 1992 study), which no one has dared to follow either... curious.
This fourth supplement also could be alpha lipoic acid, resveratrol, intranasal glutathione or NAC, magnesium treonate, sublingual B12, ...
This is not only a legal issue, but also an ethical one: the doctor and the pharmacist should always be consulted to adjust everything to each patient.
If I had to make a choice with the food I would certainly choose a "Mediterranean" diet with some oriental additions such as green tea (matcha if possible), ginger, turmeric, curry, some Japanese, Tibetan or Chinese mushrooms, etc, such as reishi, shiitake, maitake, yamabushitake, etc. And among the 80-100 grams of essential daily proteins, I would always choose an egg yolk and some oily fish: small sardines, non farmed salmon, etc. Or the avocado only before starting the levodopa therapy (because of the tyramine).
Foods such as tomato, pepper, spinach, broccoli, turmeric with black pepper, ginger, cayenne pepper, red onion and crushed raw garlic, gazpacho, etc.
Medicinal plants such as milk thistle, Japanese ashitaba, centella asiatica (gotu kola), cat's claw, etc.
I focus on what we know works. Regardless of the causal explanation.
When Dr. Lind gave oranges and lemons to two of the sailors with scurvy on the deck of HMS Salisbury in 1747 he did not know why, but they were cured. More than 200 years later, in the mid-1990s of the last century, we realized that we could not synthesize ascorbic acid in our livers as most mammals could, because of a genetic defect that prevented the use of the enzyme that converted sugar into vitamin C (because of the great similarity, Dehydroascorbic acid can use glucose transporters to cross the blood-brain barrier. And possibly sugar-rich diets and diabetes make it difficult for vitamin C to protect neurons by competing with excess sugar in the diet to pass to the brain).
(Jesus Marquez Rivera. "Parkinson's here and now".)
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