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Parkinson’s Disease
Cannabinoids, Magnesium and Iodine
In Multiple Sclerosis marijuana can limit the
muscle pain and spasticity caused by the disease,
as well as relieving tremor and unsteadiness of gait.
We might expect the same in Parkinson’s disease sufferers.
My first experience with a Parkinson’s patient was with a patient of my wife. I saw her enter with much difficulty using a stroller. Her hands shook uncontrollably and she was miserable to say the least. We gave her a little magnesium to take both orally and transdermally. Two weeks later she came back but this time almost ran in without her stroller with the biggest smile I ever saw. Just a little magnesium had done something to her that none of her medications could.
Recently I went to visit a woman who also has Parkinson’s disease. I left with her some iodine, sodium bicarbonate and magnesium and she looked like a new woman when I visited again. Her hands barely shook.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a disorder of the brain that leads to shaking (tremors) and difficulty with walking, movement, and coordination. Parkinson's disease most often develops after age 50. It is one of the most common nervous system disorders of the elderly. It sometimes occurs in younger adults and affects both men and women.
The National Parkinson Foundation reports that in the United States, 50,000-60,000 new cases of PD are diagnosed each year, adding to the one million people who currently have PD. In fact, it is estimated that four to six million people around the world suffer from the condition.
Symptoms include:
- Automatic movements (such as blinking) slow or stop
- Constipation
- Difficulty swallowing
- Drooling
- Impaired balance and walking
- Lack of expression in the face (mask-like appearance)
- Muscle aches and pains
- Movement problems
- Difficulty starting or continuing movement, such as starting to walk or getting out of a chair
- Loss of small or fine hand movements; writing may become small and difficult to read; eating becomes difficult
- Slowed movements
- Stooped position
- Rigid or stiff muscles, often beginning in the legs
- Shaking, tremors
- Tremors usually occur in the limbs at rest, or when the arm or leg is held out
- Tremors go away during movement
- Over time, tremor can be seen in the head, lips, tongue, and feet
- May be worse when tired, excited, or stressed
- Finger-thumb rubbing (pill-rolling tremor) may be present
- Slowed, quieter speech and monotone voice
Other symptoms:
- Anxiety, stress, and tension
- Confusion
- Dementia
- Depression
- Fainting
- Hallucinations
- Memory loss
There is no known cure for Parkinson's disease in contemporary medicine for they refuse to acknowledge how toxicities from heavy metals and chemicals run head on into nutritional deficiencies causing disease. Meaning modern medicine has not the slightest idea what it’s doing when it comes to neurological disorders.
Many of the medications used to control symptoms can cause severe side effects, including hallucinations, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and delirium. This is typical of pharmaceutical medicine, which only adds to the toxic burden and increases nutritional deficiencies.
I am happy to say that Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases do respond well to my Natural Allopathic protocol. There is sufficient evidence and testimony to suggest that people do not have to suffer with the worsening disorder that leads to total disability. Untreated, Parkinson’s leads to a deterioration of all brain functions and an early miserable death![1]
Magnesium and Parkinson’s
Evidence is mounting that low levels of magnesium contribute to the heavy metal deposition in the brain that precedes Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s. Many of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can be overcome with high magnesium supplementation. In a trial with 30 epileptics, 450 mg of magnesium supplied daily successfully controlled seizures. Another study found that the lower the magnesium blood levels the more severe was the epilepsy. In most cases magnesium works best in combination with vitamin B6 and zinc.
Magnesium protects the cells from aluminum, mercury, lead, cadmium, beryllium, and nickel and is often used alone as a mineral therapy for successful chelation of metals, and is necessary in their chelation when stronger agents are used. Because of its nerve and muscle support, magnesium is helpful for nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, depression, and muscle cramps.
Magnesium comes out on top in the class of cerebral protective agents. Magnesium offers significant cerebral protection with a high preservation effect on neurological function following brain injury or in healing chronic impaired dysfunction like in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. It certainly helps in the case of stroke and that’s why they are experimenting with injecting it the minute the ambulance shows up at the door.
Nerve cells use a brain chemical called dopamine to help control muscle movement. Parkinson's disease occurs when the nerve cells in the brain that make dopamine are slowly destroyed. Without dopamine, the nerve cells in that part of the brain cannot properly send messages. This leads to the loss of muscle function. The damage gets worse with time.
It has been shown that continuous low magnesium intake induces exclusive loss of dopaminergic neurons in rats.[2] Magnesium exerts both preventive and ameliorating effects in an in vitro rat Parkinson disease model involving 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+) toxicity in dopaminergic neurons.[3] Magnesium protects dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra from degeneration. There is a significant and striking effect of magnesium for prevention of neurite and neuron pathology, and also amelioration of neurite pathology.[4] Magnesium deficiency, over generations in rats, is tied to the pathogenesis of the parkinsonism-dementia complex and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.[5]
The lack of dopaminergic neurons is reflected by a disturbed
balance of the neural circuitry in the basal ganglia. Cannabinoids
alleviate some parkinsonian symptoms by their remarkable receptor-
mediated modulatory action in the basal ganglia output nuclei.[6]
Magnesium Testimonial
“I have completed my first day of magnesium oil therapy on William who has had Parkinson’s for over 20 years. I am hoping for a revival of functionality but not with high expectations because of the severity and duration of his symptoms. His condition before starting the magnesium oil was: He couldn’t talk at all. Could not articulate what-so-ever! He was barely functional and did nothing voluntarily. No exercise and no attempt to stop drooling. The drooling was getting so bad and so constant that I was beginning to isolate him to his bedroom in his big recliner because the carpets are new here and the enzymes of the saliva stain permanently. And it appeared to be getting worse by the week. That’s how he was. He also had started getting violent with me. If I pushed him too hard he would fly into a rage and hit me with whatever he could lay his hands on.”
“I applied the magnesium oil twice yesterday and he woke this morning and washed his own face, cleaned his teeth and put on his robe by himself—without being told to do these things. This is unheard of and hasn’t happened for two years. What is more, he is not drooling. The drooling has been massive and absolutely uncontrollable for about a year. His swallowing reflex is simply going. He has had his nutritional drink, his coffee, his brain formula, fresh veggies, and scrambled eggs and hasn’t drooled once. So, my hope is high. This is the best I’ve seen for a very long time.”
“After only three days interestingly his speech has been much better overall. I am applying it faithfully three times a day all over him. I will just keep up the application and let time do the explaining. I am very encouraged by the improvement in speech. I honestly did not expect to see any results. His eyes are brighter, the concentration is longer and better and the speech is much improved. By no means has he become a “toastmaster” but at least he can string two or three words together now and does not freeze up completely.”
“Most recently he has been quite violent. For example he thrashed me over the head with a plastic ladle one day so quickly that he got in six or seven good thwacks before I could snatch it away from him. But since starting the magnesium oil, his demeanor has improved immensely. No more surly ugly looks, no more stubborn refusals to swallow or do something that I ask him to do. Great improvement and best of all he is now able to communicate so he can tell me what he wants and needs.”
“After 3+ weeks his speech is still much improved. It seems to be stable
now. He couldn’t give any lectures at Harvard, but he can make himself
understood as to what he needs or wants. As I said prior to the
magnesium treatment he couldn’t speak well enough to communicate
anything.”
Nancy English Vinal
Cannabis and Parkinson’s Disease
It has only recently been observed that some cannabinoids are potent antioxidants that can protect neurons from death even without cannabinoid receptor activation. It seems that cannabinoids can delay or even stop progressive degeneration of brain dopaminergic systems, a process for which there is presently no prevention. In combination with magnesium cannabinoids represent, qualitatively, a new approach to the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease.
Dr. Evzin Ruzicka, an attending neurologist at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic said, “To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the effect of cannabis on Parkinson's disease, and our findings suggest it may alleviate some symptoms" states Dr. Evin RuIcka.[7]
39 patients (46%) reported that their Parkinson's disease symptoms in general were relieved after they started using cannabis. In terms of specific symptoms, 26 (31%) reported an improvement in tremor while at rest, and 38 (45%) experienced a relief of bradykinesia. Relief of muscle rigidity was reported by 32 (38%), and 12 (14%) said they had an improvement in levodopa-induced dyskinesias.
The respondents reported that the improvement in symptoms occurred an average of 1.7 months after they had started using cannabis. Patients who used it for at least three months were more likely to experience symptom relief than those with shorter experience, the investigators reported.
In a 2007 study published in Nature, researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine report that endocannabinoids, naturally occurring chemicals found in the brain that are similar to the active compounds in marijuana and hashish, helped trigger a dramatic improvement in mice with a condition similar to Parkinson's.
Dr. Robert Malenka, at the Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Dr. Anatol Kreitzer combined a drug used to treat Parkinson's disease (Dopamine) with an experimental compound that can boost the level of endocannabinoids in the brain. When they used the combination in mice with a condition like Parkinson's, the mice went from being frozen in place to moving around freely in 15 minutes. "They were basically normal," Kreitzer said.
"It turns out the receptors for cannabinoids are all over the brain, but they are not always activated by the naturally occurring endocannabinoids," said Malenka. The treatment used on the mice involves enhancing the activity of the chemicals where they occur naturally in the brain. "That is a really important difference, and it is why we think our manipulation of the chemicals is really different from smoking marijuana."[8]
Iodine
Iodine is found in large quantities in the brain and the
ciliary body of the eye. Lack of iodine may be involved
in production of Parkinson’s disease and glaucoma.
Dr. James
Howenstein
Long-term iodine deficiency appears linked to abnormalities in the dopaminergic system that include an increased number of dopamine receptors. It is argued that this raises susceptibility to dopamine oxidation which, in turn, causes deficiencies of the antioxidant enzymes Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase. Dopamine deficiency also leads to elevated cytotoxic glutamate levels.
"....The hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease may be linked to soil and hence dietary iodine deficiency, associated with glaciation, is not new. In 1987, De Pedro-Cuesta[9] concluded that Parkinsonism had the strongest links with “Early life exposure to a geochemical imbalance, related to the last glaciation, associated to iodine washing out, present in soil, water and diet.”
De Pedro-Cuesta reached this conclusion based on Parkinson’s disease prevalence and mortality in selected age groups and similarities between current levodopa use and goiter distribution, during the period 1920 to 1935. As early as 1959, Warren also argued that multiple sclerosis was more common in regions that had suffered recent continental glaciations, where it tends to develop most frequently in individuals who, as newborns, were fed milk from iodine deficient cows. It has been hypothesized that a lack of iodine in fodder deprives cattle of thyroxine, a deficiency which in turn prevents the conversion of carotene to vitamin A.
Milk short of this vitamin also lacks the essential fatty acids because the latter, which form the main constituents of the myelin sheath, are oxidized rapidly in the absence of vitamin A. Certainly, a thyroid deficiency in rats has been linked to reduced myelin formation.[10]
Rat studies indicate that iodine deficiencies can cause reduced brain weight, limited myelin formation, retarded neuronal maturation, a lowering of the production of various enzymes and slowing of the rates of protein and R.N.A. synthesis. Similar processes appear to occur in many neurological diseases.
In the brain, iodine concentrates in the substantia nigra, an area
of the brain that has been associated with Parkinson’s disease.
David
Brownstein M.D.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001762/
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15885623
[3] Hashimoto T, Nishi K, Nagasao J, Tsuji S, Oyanagi Kin Res. 2008 Mar 4;1197:143-51:
[4] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum
[5] Neuropathology 26, 115-128
[6]Role of
cannabinoids in Parkinson's disease by Sevcik J, Masek K
Institute of Pharmacology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,
Prague. Drugs Aging 2000 Jun; 16(6): 391-5
[7] http://www.cannabis-med.org/english/bulletin/ww_en_db_cannabis_artikel.php?id=131#2
[8]Parkinsons' Helped By Marijuana-Lke Chemicals In Brain; http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/62616.php
[9] De Pedro-Cuesta J. Studies on the prevalence of Paralysis Agitans by tracer methodology. Acta Neurol Scand, 1987. Suppl 112, 75: 106
[10] http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1999/articles/1999-v14n03-p128.shtml
Legal Notice:The Author specifically invokes the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and of the press without prejudice. The information written is published for informational purposes only under the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution for the United States of America, and should not in any way be used as a substitute for the advice of a physician or other licensed health care practitioner. The statements contained herein have not been evaluated by the FDA. The products discussed herein are not intended to diagnose, cure, prevent or treat any disease. Images, text and logic are copyright protected. ALL rights are explicitly reserved without prejudice, and no part of this essay may be reproduced except by written consent. ©2010 by Mark Sircus
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