New Health Discoveries for Neurological Disease: Protecting Nerve Cells and Reversing Symptoms

New research is giving insight into neurological disease, especially the protective mechanisms that normally protect our neural cells from damage and from death.

People are beginning to use this new understanding of how the body’s protective mechanisms work to slow down and halt untimely neuro-degeneration, so that there are now people with these serious diseases who are successfully reversing their symptoms.

Parkinsons, Huntington's, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimers, Lou Gehrig's, ALS, Tardive Dyskinesia,TD

Increasing lines of evidence suggest that damage to the mitochondria of nerve cells plays a key role in neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

Mitochondria are small "organelles" in our cells that give us energy. Mitochondria convert nutrients into energy as well as doing many other specialized tasks. Essentially, they are the cells' "power plants."

Damage to the mitochondria, in turn, increases the generation of “reactive oxygen species” and the onset of oxidative stress, leading to oxidative damage and programmed cell death.

At the same time, the balance of glutathione in the cells is disturbed. Glutathione is an important protector of energy metabolism (mitochondrian function) during periods of oxidative stress.

In one study, glutathione levels were reduced by 40% in the substantia nigra in early stage Parkinson’s disease. These levels fall even much further in later stages, the magnitude of reduction in glutathione seeming to parallel the severity of the disease.

Thus, the lowered glutathione values and increased oxidative stress are thought to be responsible, for instance, for the loss of dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra in Parkinson’s disease patients.

Protection of Neural Cells

However, new research is showing that it is glutathione (GSH) but NOT vitamins C or E that protects human neural cells from this type of cell death. (dopamine-induced apoptosis) The interaction of antioxidants is complex, and it now turns out that they are dependent on the presence of this key molecule called glutathione to function properly.

Over the past 15 years, glutathione has been the subject of over 75,000 medical publications -- it is a protein molecule that is produced in the body by each cell, and has been called “the body’s most powerful protector and healing agent.”

The key, however, is that our neural cells must make their own supply of glutathione. The problem is that it is rapidly consumed on a daily basis through normal metabolism, illness, stress and even exercise. Glutathione especially diminishes as one gets older.

Find Out More About How Glutathione Protects:

• Glutathione: Systemic Protectant Against Oxidative and Free Radical Damage, dedicated to the memory of Professor Daniel Mazia, my PhD mentor and a pioneer in cell biology, by Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D.

• Neuro-degenerative Diseases – Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and low Glutathione by Patricia A.L. Kongshavn, Ph.D. Immunologist

• Glutathione Decreases in Chronic Diseases: Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Louisville School of Medicine.

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What Doctors say About Best Protection with GSH glutathione

Protecting Against Neuro-degeneration

Glutathione must be made by the body itself -- from precursors, or the nutritional building blocks. So while it is possible to take vitamins in pill form, any glutathione taken in pill form tends to be destroyed by the digestion.

Fortunately, Dr. Gustavo Bounous, a distinguished Canadian surgeon and immunologist from McGill University, discovered the mechanism for raising glutathione naturally, and without using pharmaceuticals.

When he fed his research animals a special protein, they lived 30 to 50% longer. It turns out that this protein provided the precise precursors needed to raise the body’s levels of glutathione.

This discovery is being used by people to increase their levels of glutathione, halt the progression of their neurological disease and reverse their symptoms.

A Common Denominator for Neurological Disease?

Although the "target area" of damage differs in each disease, researchers have nevertheless identified a common basis for neurological damage to be “oxidative stress.” Oxidation is part of breathing and creating energy for life. Its by-products, "free radicals," are natural, just like any fire produces smoke.

"Oxidative stress" occurs when we produce more free radicals than we can "mop up" before they cause damage to tissues.

Damage caused by free radicals is being considered by researchers to be the common mechanism underlying various forms of neural cell death -- including “excitotoxicity,” “apoptosis” and “necrosis.”

Free radicals are reported by medical researchers to cause damage to the central nervous system, with numerous studies linking this type of damage to degenerative brain conditions and diseases of the central nervous system.

Today, few experts disagree that “free-radical propagation” and the associated “antioxidant depletion” are involved in at least some types of degenerative tissue breakdown.

Fortunately, a better understanding of the body’s protective mechanisms is being used by many people to slow down and even reverse their symptoms of neurological disease, including: Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, MS, Alzheimer's, ALS, Tardive Dyskinesia, TD, Huntington’s, and the cell damage caused by a stroke.

Recommendations for Supplements Against Neuro Degeneration

Links For Neurological Diseases:

See: The Role of Glutathione in Health, Disease and Neurological Disease

See: Alzheimer's disease

See: Parkinson's Disease: New Neuro Protective Discoveries Preventing Parkinson's "Second Set" of Symptoms

See: Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS

See: Multiple Sclerosis, MS

Health Discoveries for Slowing Neurological Diseases: Parkinsons, Huntingtons, Multiple Sclerosis, MS, Alzheimers, Tardive Dyskinesia, TD, Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS,