Those Fires Within: Managing Brain Inflammation
by Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D. totalhealth science editor
How do you spell disease? Inflam-ma-tion. Inflammation,
fire within our tissues. First recognized
by the Egyptians almost
4,000 years ago, literally as a
“hot thing,” inflammation is now the hottest
topic in medicine. It is a process that evolved
to control damage aggressively in response to
injury of whatever kind, then to bring about
healing of the injured tissue. But inflammation
can get out of control and become
destructive. Fortunately, there’s a lot we can
do to help ourselves stay on the healthy side
of inflammation.
Inflammation is a complex family of biochemical
and cellular reaction cascades, each
building on the ones that go before. As the
body’s core response to injury, the inflammatory
cascades are a good thing when they’re
working as a measured, self-limiting response
to injury, followed by orderly transition to
the healing phase. Textbook inflammation
involves four “cardinal signs,” redness and
swelling, with heat and pain. In 1882 the
great pathologist Rudolf Virchow added a
fifth: disturbed function, meaning that if an
organ is inflamed, it does not function as it
should. Virchow had hit upon the possibility
that sustained (chronic) inflammation can
lead to disease.
The evidence is convincing that sustained
inflammation is driving the degenerative diseases
of our time. Chronic inflammation is
centrally implicated in the big killer diseases
—heart disease, cancer, chronic viral
conditions—as well as diseases that disable
and cripple—arthritis, osteoporosis, macular
degeneration, Alzheimer’s and others. The
keys to turning this story around lie not in
drugs but in lifestyle, diet and nontoxic
dietary supplements.
Nowhere is damage from runaway inflammation
more evident than in the brain, as I
learned over the past several years while publishing
in-depth reviews on brain diseases.
Parkinson’s disease is inflammatory, burning
away the substantia nigra and other brain
zones. Multiple sclerosis is a more sporadic,
on-and-off type of progression but inflammatory
just the same. Alzheimer’s involves several
overlapping breakdown processes, of
which inflammation is definitely a major one.
Stroke is gross runaway inflammation and
autism in children features subtle but telltale
features of inflammation.
Dr. David Perlmutter has called
Parkinson’s disease “the brain on fire.” The
brain is particularly susceptible to runaway
inflammation because it uses a lot of oxygen
and has a lot of flammable material (the fatty
nerve insulation). Toxins accelerate the burn
and in Parkinson’s, pesticides and mercury are
undoubtedly involved. Because the brain
lacks pain receptors, the afflicted person does
not know his brain is inflamed. Perlmutter’s
patients respond to his anti-inflammatory
program with excellent results.
What then, is an effective program to
curb inflammation? Antioxidants
help block the free radicals that can
stoke inflammation; vitamin C is always
useful and E had some success against
dementia in a clinical trial. Other nutrient
antioxidants such as glutathione, alpha-lipoic
acid, N-acetylcysteine, coenzyme Q10 and
taurine team up with the various antioxidant
enzymes into an antioxidant defense system
against free radicals. Glutathione given intravenously
can produce dramatic improvement.
Many medicinal herbs have a high content
of flavonoids, complex molecules that do
not replace the nutrient antioxidants but can augment their actions. Quality Ginkgo biloba
extract can be combined with phospholipids
to improve the flavonoids’ absorption and
thereby enhance their antioxidant action.
Ginkgo is compatible with a nutritional antiinflammation
program, though not with anticoagulant
drugs.
Certain orthomolecular nutrients help
the damaged brain to rebuild.
Orthomolecules are intrinsic to our
metabolism but difficult for the body to biosynthesize
and so must be supplemented.
Acetyl-L-carnitine ( ALCAR) helps the brain
cells make energy they need in order to produce
new bio-molecules for repair and
renewal. ALCAR has a variety of brain
benefits.
GlyceroPhosphoCholine ( GPC) is a reservoir
of active choline to make the transmitter
acetylcholine and for making new phospholipids
to build new cell membrane mass. GPC
is the proven nutrient of choice for subjects
with mental deterioration related to poor circulation
—a large population group. GPC is
also excellent for improving concentration
including in young healthy people. In the
brain (and other tissues) GPC is a reservoir of
active choline to make the transmitter acetylcholine
and for making new phospholipids to
build new cell membrane mass.
As I have described in previous totalhealth articles, the total toxic load on the body, the total infectious load and the total lifestyle burden all promote chronic inflammation. So do dietary deficiencies. The healthy body has a “set-point” closer to proinflammation than anti-inflammation, yet the typical Western way of life promotes a harmful pro-inflammatory balance. Yet with a personal commitment, a net anti-inflammatory balance can be achieved despite all these negative influences. Foremost among the nutrients that can change the inflammation set-point are the long-chain fatty acids, omega-3 type ( LCFA3).
The LCFA3 are vitamin-like nutrients,
since nutritional deficiency states are known,
and some human populations (for example
the young, the aged, those with diabetes or
chronic viruses) cannot effectively bio-synthesize
them. Most important for the setpoint
are DHA (DocosaHexaenoic Acid) and
EPA (EicosaPentaenoic Acid), which currently
come from fish oil supplements or from special
one-cell sources (algae). The sometimesvaunted
ALA (Alpha-Linolenic Acid) has
limited functions in humans and most people
do not readily convert it to the highly active
DHA and EPA.
All the LCFA3 are functional only when
structurally integrated with phospholipid
molecules. Phospholipids make
the LCFA3 active by positioning them within
cell membranes, so that they are accessible to
enzymes that convert them into information
transfer substances. Among their many
effects, these substances produced from the
membrane LCFA3, known as prostaglandins
and cytokines, are highly anti-inflammatory.
Supplementing with LCFA3 helps move
the brain’s and other organs’ balance away
from pro-inflammatory and toward antiinflammatory.
As an extension to their pro-inflammatory
benefits, the LCFA3 of membrane phospholipids
also contribute to the brain’s regenerative
capacity by keeping cell membranes
fluid. The greater a membrane’s fluidity, the
more rapidly its embedded proteins can
migrate, rotate or flip within the membrane.
Cells with rapid activity, such as the brain’s
nerve cells, the retina’s light-sensing cells, the
heart’s beating fibers and the motile spermatozoa,
all have a high content of LCFA3 as
omega-3 phospholipids. For the brain,
omega-3 PS (PhosphatidylSerine), with DHA
as part of its structure, has been rated as probably
the most important functional molecule.
PS has marked benefits to memory and
learning and seems to help the brain rebuild
damaged circuits. The pro-phospholipid GPC
also has a brain revitalizing effect.
The fish oil and algal LCFA3 that are currently
popular as supplements are in the triglyceride
form rather than the phospholipid form, so
following their absorption they require further
processing to become activated. A novel
source recently became available that does
supply LCFA3 in their activated forms.
Neptune krill oil (NKO) is very high in phospholipids
with LCFA3 integrated into their
molecular structure. It comes from small
organisms abundant in the remote oceans
and now being sustainably harvested. From
them comes an unpolluted, remarkably stable
oil that is free of mercury and bright red in
color because of its high astaxanthin content.
With its high phospholipid-LCFA3 content
and high antioxidant potency, NKO has excellent
anti-inflammatory potential. Early
testing indicates it improves pain, bloating,
breast tenderness and other physical and
emotional discomforts associated with menstruation.
Further clinical assessment is in
progress.
Virtually all the things that are wrong
about modern living just happen to
stoke the fires of inflammation. But to
this sad reality there’s a happy flip side: by
tending to our internal fires we buy ourselves
time against cancer, cardiovascular disease
and the myriad other degenerative afflictions.
The anti-inflammatory way of living is identical
with “optimal health” and “anti-aging”
lifestyles. The situation will continue to
improve as rapid research advances identify
agents that can safely and effectively help us
fend off inflammation. Perhaps not by coincidence,
the best of these are the nutraceuticals
designed by nature. TH
Parris M. Kidd, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized
nutrition consultant and educator.
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