David A. Steenblock M.S., D.O., H.MD

NEW TREATMENTS REVEALED

Multiple Causes of Parkinson's

Most doctors and patients consider Parkinson's to be a degeneration of the base of the brain, the substantia nigra, striatum and basal ganglia. Usually Parkinson's is thought to be associated with excess amounts of iron, copper, heavy metals, mercury, lead, aluminum, silica, etc., and in fact, oftentimes that is the case. In fact, if you go back to the Journal of Gerontology, 1967, there was an article about how at the age of 45, most of us start developing hypothalamic pituitary stalk fibrosis . Between the hypothalamus and the pituitary there's a stalk, or a connection, where there are blood vessels and nerve tracts and this area becomes scarred down secondary to excess iron deposits. This occurs because of a slow process of diapadesis of red blood cells escaping from the venules of this hypothalamic pituitary tract, causing the iron to be released into the tissue. The iron then reacts with oxygen to cause activation of free radicals, which causes the fibroblasts and connective tissue cells in that area to generate scar tissue. This process starts to "choke" us off at about the age of 45, and that is when we begin to lose pituitary control. This process also occurs in the substantia nigra and basal ganglia for a lot of people. This process is one of the mechanisms that produces a loss of neurohormones that normally maintain the health of the brain cells. This acquired deficiency of growth hormone, DHEA, pregnenolone, etc. predisposes a person to brain degeneration.

Two Different Kinds of Parkinson's

In the past, Parkinson's has been split into two different kinds: 50% vascular Parkinson's and 50% idiopathic Parkinson's. The idiopathic Parkinson's, for example, would include those caused by a virus, or viral-induced Parkinson's. Take for example the 1917, 1918 flu epidemic wherein people who were involved with this epidemic wound up with Parkinson's when they were older. There is definitely a virus component that can contribute to Parkinson's.

Pollutant-induced Parkinson's occurs in people who work in gas stations, or people who work on farms or those who work in dry clothes cleaners or clothing manufacturing where they have a lot of chemicals that get absorbed into the body. Many pollutants can contribute to the degeneration of the brain.

When we start talking about degeneration of the brain, you have to talk about how the brain is put together. You have white matter and gray matter. White matter is the insulation around the wires that connect everything and the gray matter are the computer chips. The computer chips are what make you think. But then the computer chips have to talk to each other, so they need wires, and these wires are the white matter. The white matter cells also feed nutrition to the computer chips. So the nutrition goes from the blood to the white matter to the gray matter (the computer chips). Then when the computer chips are done with the food they "dump" out poisons ["excrement" basically] and the white matter has to digest it and spit it back into the bloodstream for elimination. If anything at all interferes with that process then you start having problems, and that is one of the reasons why Parkinson's develops because you have a degeneration of some of the white matter cells that contribute to the transportation of oxygen and nutrition into the substantia nigra. So you start having inefficiency of metabolism. Once you have inefficiency of metabolism you start having degeneration. It has definitely been shown that Parkinson's patients can not remove poisons from their blood as rapidly or as completely as age-matched controls. These poisons can come from the air, the food, the intestine and even from the person's own metabolism. These poisons damage the white matter cells (glia) and this creates the situation wherein these cells no longer function as well as they should and cannot detoxify the toxic wastes that are excreted as a byproduct of the metabolically very active neurons. If these waste products cannot be removed from the vicinity of the nerve synapses, then the nerve becomes stressed and will either misfire or even die.

One other fact with this regard is that this is all conventional medicine, or what doctors and people think of as Parkinson's. But it turns out that something beyond conventional medicine, and more fundamental is that not only do you have a loss of dopamine in Parkinson's, but you also have a loss of norepinephrine, or noradrenaline. So you start having autonomic dysfunctions and problems with your bowels (you get constipated) and other little problems with your nervous system (you get hypotensive sometimes, as in your blood pressure dropping when you stand up) your emotions sometimes gets blunted because of the loss of activity of adrenaline and dopamine. So you actually have loss of both. It's not just loss of dopamine and dopamine transporters and all of that, which is what conventional thinking is, but in fact, you now have a loss of other substances - or at least their function. What does that mean, or what can we do about it?

Causal Proof

It has just been shown that plasmapheresis makes Parkinson's patients get better temporarily. Plasmapheresis is a process of taking blood out of a person, and then spinning down the blood to separate the blood cells from the plasma. You throw away the plasma and put good albumin or plasma back into person along with their own blood cells. So you basically clean their blood out and when you do this they don't have Parkinson's anymore. The only trouble with this, of course, is that it only lasts for a few days because they then begin to "auto-intoxicate" once again. But the point of this whole thing is that with Parkinson's, it's something in the blood that is poisoning you. This is a very, very important concept because it basically proves that Parkinson's is likely immunologic.

Parkinson's Is Immunologic

There is a type of cell in the adrenal gland called the adrenochrome cell which makes a variety of different substances, some of which Parkinson's patients become allergic to. The Parkinson's patient develops antibodies to these substances and the antigen-antibody complex that forms actually interferes with the receptor site of dopamine and the receptor site of adrenaline in the system so that your body is making antibodies that interfere with the functioning of your body and your brain. These nerves, the adrenaline nerves and the dopamine nerves, are no longer able to function because you've got antibody-antigen complexes that are interfering with the receptor sites. Of course if you can eliminate this situation you would get better. How do we know this? Because we have neuropeptides that we give patients which shut off their immune system, and they get a lot better. So we've got two lines of evidence that show that without a doubt immunological dysfunctions are a major part of Parkinson's which nobody has ever really considered, much less brought into any treatment. We have a number of things we can use to attack this immunological problem.

We need to look at all of the different factors that have contributed to the damage. Be honest about your past and your lifestyle so we can help you pinpoint the culprit:

• Were you an amphetamine user? Let us know about it. Amphetamine is a contributing factor to the degeneration of the brain and causes Parkinson's.
• Have you been associated with a farm? You need to let us know.
• Have you been using sprays for killing bugs? Do you have the "guys" come in and spray your house once a month? We need to know.
• Do you eat a lot of fish? Most fish has mercury obtained from contaminated waters where they are caught or harvested. Mercury stimulates autoimmune reactivity of the body! We need to know if you have this poison in your body.
• We need to do certain tests to determine what kinds of heavy metals you have in your system. There are tests: DMSA, DMPS, EDTA and Desferol, each of which when given intravenously can pull different kinds of heavy metals out of your tissues and eliminate them via your urine. To do it right we need to do the above-mentioned four different types of chelations to determine which metals you are high in and which chelating agent you need to remove the offending poisons.

Risk Factors

We also have many risk factors associated with all of the above, which are considered to contribute to this process of degeneration of the base of the brain.

Some of these risk factors are:

• Heavy metals
• Pesticides
• Sugar in the diet
• Candida in the intestinal tract and systemically
• Viral
• Allergies
• Immunological problems
• Genetics
• Oxygen deprivation
• Pollutants

Heavy Metals and Candida

We know there is a correlation between heavy metals and Parkinson's, in that we know that without a doubt heavy metals induce autoimmunity. We know also that Candida (a yeast infection) induces autoimmunity. While we have not been able to actually identify the antibodies that are produced when you have both, they are there and working to cause deterioration of your body. When you have both it's a double whammy on the nervous system and it's a major reason for the development of the chronic degenerative diseases: Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, and autism. They are all related. If you look at autistic children, for example, you find they have heavy metal poisoning, like mercury. They also have yeast infections. Those two together really mess you up. When you give them the aforementioned neuropeptides that shuts down the immune system, and stop it from interacting with their body, the autistic children can be helped greatly or may even be cured!

After you've done the tests previously mentioned, you can then begin to formulate a plan to combat the problem. The brain cells in this situation are very fragile and barely alive and functioning. We need to do everything we can to help these cells improve their functions. As an example of how fragile these cells are, one of my previous Parkinson's patients was about 88, thin, and fragile, with osteoporosis. I put him on an organic diet, had him exercising every day, I gave him a shot of B12, B-complex, and folic acid every single day. Every day that he did these things he was fine. Every day that he didn't he became demented!

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

Diet Free of Pesticides or Organic

In Parkinson's, the brain cells are not working quite right having only marginal efficiency. That is, they're not healthy. But if you give the person a diet that is free of pesticides and chemicals, their system is going to be able to work much more efficiently. The nerves that are damaged are going to be able to function better and be more efficient, which means more energy, which means less Parkinsonianism. The cells that are damaged which are not working quite right and instead of having 100% efficiency, are only running at 60% and are still operating a little bit. At 50% they start to die. At 70% they would be better, 80% better yet, and of course at 100% you're back to normal.

CDSA and Urine Organic Acid Tests

First you want to try to improve the efficiency of the neurons that are present but are "sick" from this immunological attack from poisons in the gut from Candida (if you have Candida in your intestinal tract you have allergies) or other types of bacteria or yeast. There are many kinds of bacteria or yeast that grow in the intestinal tract that are either poisonous and have poisons that enter into the body that poison the white matter cells and then interfere with the metabolism of the brain cells, or you have allergies to these things. So that's another factor that needs to be considered. The way you do this is with a CDSA (comprehensive digestive stool analysis) and a urine organic acid test.

Hormone Tests

A physical examination with lab work needs to be done to determine hormone, amino acid, and vitamin levels and such so a part of the protocol can be to get your amino acid, DHEA and testosterone levels back via supplementation or injections.

PET Scan

A PET Scan can be done to find out exactly what's going on so we can differentiate between Alzheimer's and Parkinson's or some other condition. It's a beneficial thing to do if you can. In any case, you'd still wind up doing most of what we've discussed no matter what the outcome of the PET Scan.

One Big DETOX

Basically the treatment for Parkinson's amounts to one big detox in order to help the body heal the damaged areas and prevent further damage. Some other avenues of detox could include:

• Turkish massages. You'd do this 3 times per week, soak in the Turkish tub along with detox substances like Chlorophyll, Bentonite, and different clays.
• There are also internal detoxifiers like cinnamon (anti E.Coli activity) and NDF and acidophilus several times per day

Summary

1. Find and eliminate the risk factors e.g., environmental sources of all pollutants: metals, solvents, pesticides, plastics, etc.

2. Heavy metal testing and ongoing chelation: DMSA, DMPS, EDTA and Desferol

3. CDSA and Urine Organic Acid tests for Candida and similar risk factors

4. Take:

• glutathione
• N-acetyl cysteine
• taurine
• selenium
• Neuropeptides
• Amino Acids
• Hormones
• Methyl B12, B-Complex, Folic Acid
• 3cc of Procaine [Gerovital] shots every other day

5. Detoxification measures

6. Exercise

7. Stem Cells are showing excellent results with Parkinson's especially if done in combination with all of the above-mentioned therapies.

8. External Counter Pulsation [ECP] stimulates VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) in the body and this stimulates the formation of new blood vessels and has a trophic effect on damaged neurons. About 70% of our Parkinson's patients improve with a course of 35 treatments. The effectiveness of this treatment is enhanced by our endogenous stem cell program which consists of a variety of agents that safely stimulate your bone marrow stem cells to proliferate and to be released into the blood stream. Once in the bloodstream the external counter pulsation device pushes the stem cells into the brain so the treatment of external counter pulsation is even more effective if the patient receives daily injections of these neuron trophic and stem cell mobilizing agents.

It Takes Time

In combination these remedies constitute a "magic bullet". Once you begin doing some of these things and you're going in the right direction, you can expect to see improvements. Like anything in this life, the more you work at it, the more results you're likely to enjoy.

Glossary of Terms:

Adrenochrome Adrenochrome is an oxidation product of adrenaline (ephinephrine, norepinephrine).

Basal ganglia The basal ganglia are a collection of nuclei deep to the white matter of cerebral cortex. The name includes: caudate, putamen, nucleus accumbens, globus pallidus, substantia nigra, subthalamic nucleus, and historically the claustrum and the amygdala.

Diapadesis The process of red or white cells slipping through the endothelial cells into the tissues of the body.

E.Coli O157:H7 is one of hundreds of strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli. Although most strains are harmless and live in the intestines of healthy humans and animals, this strain produces a powerful toxin and can cause severe illness.

Fibroblasts a connective-tissue cell of mesenchymal origin that secretes proteins and especially molecular collagen from which the extracellular fibrillar matrix of connective tissue forms

Gerovital Gerovital H3 is touted as being successful in stimulating the circulatory system, strengthening bones and joints, heightening the endocrine glands and has a mobilizing effect on cholesterol. One of the earliest visible signs is improvement in the skin; it softens wrinkles, brightens color and improves pigmentation. Those who have undergone this anti-aging treatment claim a feeling of total rejuvenation, a sexual boost and a general physical and mental improvement.

Hypothalamic pituitary stalk fibrosis This connection between the hypothalamus and the pituitary is the major connection between the brain and the body. Through this, the brain tells the body in general what needs to be done on an ongoing basis. This tiny little connection is THE most important part of the brain body connection that we have.

PET Scan P ositron emission tomography (PET) scan is a unique type of imaging test that helps doctors see how the organs and tissues inside your body are actually functioning

Substantia nigra striatum The substantia nigra lies in the midbrain immediately dorsal to the cerebral peduncles.