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Parkinson's Disease

GUT INSTINCT perhaps its time to change the focus

We’re all familiar with the term “gut feeling”. As it turns out, the term may be more apt than we realize. In recent years, research has increasingly identified the role the gut can have on mood and behavior, leading many scientists to refer to the gut as the “second brain”. Now, for the first time, researchers have found conclusive evidence that conditions such as anxiety can originate in the gut instead of the brain.

http://www.tbyil.com/Anxiety_in_the_Gut.htm

Wait for it…Oh dear its pooh well thats what the guts about I guess,I like the humour interjection in this snippet  read on and smile.

I’m not making this up.

A few years ago, John Gillies had trouble picking up his grandchild. He would stand frozen, waiting for his Parkinson’s disease to relinquish its hold and allow him to move. Then in May 2008, Gillies was given antibiotics to treat constipation, and astonishingly his Parkinson’s symptoms abated. What on earth was going on?

Thomas Borody , a gastroenterologist at the Centre for Digestive Diseases < http://www.cdd.com.au/ > in New South Wales, Australia, put Gillies on antibiotics because he had found that constipation can be caused by an infection of the colon. “He has now been seen by two neurologists, who cannot detect classic Parkinson’s disease symptoms any more,” says Borody.

Borody’s observations, together with others, suggest that many conditions, from Parkinson’s to metabolic disorders such as obesity,might be caused by undesirable changes in the microbes of the gut. If that is true, it might be possible to alleviate symptoms withantibiotics, or even faecal transplants < http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827911.100-taboo-transplant-how
-new-poo-defeats-superbugs.html > using donor faeces to restore the bowel flora to a healthy state.

Yes.  Poop transplants.

To test a possible link between the gut and Parkinson’s disease, Borody and neurologist David Rosen of the Prince of Wales Private Hospital in Sydney are embarking on a pilot study, hoping to recruit people with both constipation and Parkinson’s. The plan is first to treat them with antibiotics and eventually with faecal transplants. They hope both faecal transplants and antibiotics will treat gut infection and hence Parkinson’s.

Rosen is cautious: “I wouldn’t for one minute be suggesting that this is the next cure,” he says. But the idea that Parkinson’s could be caused by bacteria dovetails with work by neuroanatomists Heiko Braak and Kelly Del Tredici at the University of Ulm in Germany.

There is no one more devoted to finding a cure for Parkinson’s that yours truly.  I’ve undergone experimental brain surgery as part of a clinical trial looking for new and better ways to treat, reverse, and perhaps cure Parkinson’s.

But no.  No.  No.

No poopyplants for Billy!

Slate magazine takes a look at this phenomenon from a non-parky poop POV.

The donor takes a stool softener the night before and then gives a full morning bowel movement to the recipient, who takes it to a doctor for screening. It’s important to make sure that the sample doesn’t contain any parasites or other pathogens, such as hepatitis, salmonella, or HIV. Once the transplant material has been cleared, the doctor mixes it with saline to make about a pint of liquid with the consistency of a milkshake. This is pumped into the patient’s colon using a colonoscope or endoscope, or siphoned into the stomach via a nasogastric tube. (The latter method is considered more dangerous, since there’s a chance feces will end up in the lungs. Colonoscopies carry their own risk of bowel perforation.)

Eeew.  I will never look at a chocolate malt the same way again!

The Slate article continues…

And then there’s the do-it-yourself crowd. All you need is a bottle of saline, a 2-quart enema bag, and one standard kitchen blender. Mike Silverman, a University of Toronto physician who wrote up a guide to homespun fecal transplants for the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, says it’s entirely safe to do the procedure this way, provided that a doctor gets involved at some point to screen the donor sample. He felt he needed to draw up the instructions because administrators at his hospital wouldn’t allow their doctors to perform a procedure that hasn’t been validated in a large, peer-reviewed study.

My recommendation?  Don’t try this at home.

Am I saying this won’t work?  Nope.  Not saying that.  Just saying that if you come after me with the idea of putting someone else’s poop in my colon, you’d better bring some ropes, some sedatives, and a lot of strong friends to hold me down.

See, fact of the matter is, I’m already irritable — even WITHOUT the Parkinson’s disease.

I take shit from NO ONE!

written by parky pundit link below

http://www.wellsphere.com/parkinson-s-disease-article/fecal-transplants-might-cure-pd-no-sh-t-and-i-mean-that/1343322

January 23, 2012 Posted by | Parkinsons Disease | , | Leave a Comment

Gut pathology in Parkinsons Disease

The function of the gut and pathology of evidence is gaining credibility.

Braak’s staging scheme is that the areas of the nervous system littered with Lewy bodies at the earliest stages of disease could account for the non-motor symptoms. The staging system, , “has drawn attention to the damage in other transmitter systems—in other words, apart from and before the nigrostriatal system. In addition, it can serve as a framework for relating the pathology in other parts of the nervous system (gastrointestinal tract, spinal cord, and so on) to that in the brain.”

The focus on the substantia nigra faces challenge, most PD patients have additional, non-motor symptoms, and PD is coming to be understood as a much broader disease.

Chronic constipation, loss of smell, and REM sleep disorders often occur before the motor

problems (O’Sullivan et al., 2008 and ARF related news story). A large epidemiological

study, the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study, showed that men who reported less frequent

bowel movements had a significantly higher risk of developing PD within the next 24

years (Abbott et al., 2001; Abbott et al., 2003).

One of the attractive features of Braak’s staging scheme is that the areas of the nervous system littered with Lewy bodies at the earliest stages of disease could account for these non-motor symptoms. The staging system, wrote Braak in an e-mail “has drawn attention to the damage in other transmitter systems—in other words, apart from and before the nigrostriatal system. In addition, it can serve as a framework for relating the pathology in other parts of the nervous system (gastrointestinal tract, spinal cord, and so on) to that in the brain.”

Read on————–

http://www.alzforum.org/new/pdf/ParkinsonsSeries.pdf

January 13, 2012 Posted by | Anatomy-gut | | Leave a Comment

Parkinsons Disease beginings,gut implicated.

Brain-gut axis dysregulation

Novel brain-gut neurotransmitter imaging and functional brain imaging show dysregulation of the brain-gut axis at the peripheral, spinal, and cerebral levels, all of which contribute toward the symptoms of Gastro Intestinal Disorders. particularly IBS Irritable bowel syndrome

Neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine(Drug information on norepinephrine), corticotropin-releasing factor, and opioids modify both motility and sensation in the gut. Therapies that target the CNS are commonly used because of their effect on the serotonin and norepinephrine pathways, which cause direct modulation on all levels of the brain-gut axis. Serotonin and norepinephrine have been traditionally used to manage psychological and psychiatric disturbances that are commonly associated with GI disorders.6

 

Treatment of IBSs with psychiatric agents has grown significantly in the past 2 decades. Close to 15% of patients with IBS are offered an antidepressant, and in many of these patients, a gastroenterologist initiates the treatment,still regaded by some schools as aquestionable action

Past and Present

Since the days of Descartes, there has been a clear delineation in Western medicine between functional and organic conditions in the biomedical model of medicine.Using traditional diagnostic techniques, such as endoscopy and imaging, IBS were often considered at the functional end of the functional-organic spectrum. This would necessarily imply an absence of detectable structural abnormalities.

In the past 2 decades, there has been a great surge of research on motility, brain imaging, and neurotransmitters, which has given us the brain-gut axis—a working formulation now used ubiquitously by all international research groups.The pathophysiological understanding of the organic aspects of IBS has increased to such a degree that there is some debate whether we can still strictly call it a functional disorder.11 The time of Descartes is being challenged, but unfortunately the negative stigma associated with functional conditions still lingers in the minds of many clinicians and patients.

 

One of the most clinically useful ways to conceptualize IBS is with the biopsychosocial model. In this model, the influences of the CNS (at the spinal and cerebral levels), autonomic nervous system, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis result in sensory and motor dysfunctions of the GI tract in a bidirectional way.

The trigger can be peripheral (eg, GI infection, abdominal surgery) or central (eg, sexual abuse, personal losses, separation, deprivation). Psychosocial factors, such as alexithymia, catastrophization, ongoing work stress, and life events, often play an important role in the perpetuation and clinical manifestation of IBS through centrally mediated pathways.

Persons with IBS commonly have a history of major stressful life events; those at the severe end of the spectrum may also perpetuate their symptoms by means of maladaptive illness behavior–like catastrophizing This groups inability to incorporate and successfully deal with these psychosocial factors leads to more gastroenterology referrals and needless investigations at great cost, both financial and in quality of life.

Stress can enable IBS symptoms. Likewise, chronic IBS symptoms can lead to physiological effects. In addition, stress aggravates motility, lowers pain thresholds, and increases gut inflammation.

It  is suggested that Patients with severe and  symptoms of IBS may have central dysregulation of their pain regulatory pathways (central sensitization).16 Because many of these pathways are activated by the same neurotransmitters  (eg, serotonin, norepinephrine, opiates)

Neuroplasticity

Perhaps the most striking rationale for the use of centrally acting treatments in recent years is the concept of neuroplasticity. Antidepressants, and possibly psychotherapy, can promote neurogenesis (ie, the regrowth of neurons) following the loss of cortical neurons in psychiatric trauma. Functional MRI studies have shown reduced neuron density in cortical brain regions involved in emotional and pain regulation in patients with pain disorders and with IBS. Pain and psychological trauma (and particularly the combination of both) can be neurodegenerative—much like Alzheimer disease and Parkinson disease are.


In these psychological and pain conditions, antidepressants and other CNS-targeted agents and methods might offer some remedy by stimulating an increase in the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor following treatment. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is a precursor to neurogenesis, and with prolonged treatment, neural increases that correlate with the degree of recovery from depression are seen.

 

The duration of antidepressant treatment also correlates with decreased relapse frequencies and recurrence of depression. These findings provide insight into neuronal growth regulation in key areas of the central pain matrix and provide new and important opportunities for research and patient care using antidepressants for the treatment of IBS

 

Summary

As our understanding of the pathophysiology and psychopathology of IBS grows, it is becoming evident that the use of centrally acting psychopharmacological medications and concomitant psychotherapy should play an ever-increasing role in its treatment. Psychosocial factors play a key role in the etiology of IBS, especially at the more severe end of the spectrum Psychiatrists have an important role in understanding and treating patients.

November 20, 2011 Posted by | Nutrition | | Leave a Comment