This article is a goldmine of info about immunoexcitotoxicity and its antidotes.

"Natural plant products and extracts that reduce immunoexcitotoxicity-associated neurodegeneration and promote repair within the central nervous system."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...0/?tool=pubmed

It is somewhat technical, though, but well worth reading.

Just skimmed it, but that looks to be a great article. If there is a place where the patient can pry this mess loose from the money lenders it is in these plant based approaches. A lot of possibilities and the research simply has not been done because there is no profit there.

Dr. Russell Blaylock is one of our best and needs no further incentive. As a boy he watched his father die from PD. It is why he went into medicine.

Also his mother

Thanks for the GREAT info! Will this goldmine of info save any of us, or give us some real improvement? How we are going to use the info? Curcumin, Greentea Extracts and Resveratrol appear to be the most studied and we already use them more or less. The study also says there is Curcumin in IV, can we safely try that if it is available...?

This is a good one for Jeoparody (remember, in this game the answer is the question, and the question is the answer (just trying to confuse you more!)

Quick!
Answer: immunoexcitotoxicity

Question: What 20-letter word is associated with one's immune system that can excite your body at the cellular level into a specific state based on what foods/supplements you intake?
(This is as simple as I can make the definition).

Getting a little more technical:
This 20-letter word is a common mechanism in a number of neurological disorders.

How do they affect us?: These compounds dramatically affect (by suppressing or signaling cell activation) the pathophysiology (cause - like inflammation) of central nervous system disorders and promote the release and generation of neurotrophic factors essential for central nervous system healing.

Some examples: Curcumin (and we heard it first here from Ron Hutton!), quercetin, green tea catechins, balcalein, and luteolin have been extensively studied.

Well, isn't this interesting. Nothing new to Rick, Ron and a half-dozen others in this forum. But we keep seeing neurotrophic factors in every theoretical process that claims "healing or repair." We just cannot get away from GDNF .

I would place it first on my list of "things I wish I had more of."

Which ones come next in priority??
And isn't it also true that too much of any of the good stuff can turn on you; i.e. cause a different type of toxicity.
And is this we will find the cure - at the cellular level? Can advanced people with PD never goo back to the cellular level?

...Despite its potential use as an anti-addiction agent, Ibogaine is not used in the U.S. to treat addiction because of its undesirable side effects
[that would be hallucinations. dr. deborah mash has developed a form of ibogaine which does not cause hallucinations--the substance is STILL not legal in USA].
We recently found that up-regulation of the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) pathway in the dopaminergic ventral tegmental area mediates the Ibogaine-induced reduction in voluntary ethanol consumption. Human anecdotal reports and studies in rodents have suggested that a single treatment produced long-lasting attenuation of addictive phenotypes. We hypothesized that the long-lasting actions of Ibogaine are mediated at least in part via initiation of prolonged activation of the GDNF pathway.

Our results suggest that Ibogaine exposure leads to an increase in GDNF message, followed by the translation and subsequent secretion of the polypeptide, resulting in the activation of the GDNF receptor Ret, which activates the MAP kinase pathway to further up-regulate the GDNF message (Fig. 3) . To our knowledge this is the first report of the up-regulation of GDNF expression via GDNF itself, and an intriguing possibility is that the positive feedback cycle of GDNF expression and sustained activation of the GDNF pathway contribute to long-term processes such as synaptic plasticity. As GDNF has been shown to be a critical mediator of the development and survival of midbrain dopaminergic neurons, this autoregulatory pathway could have implications for the use of GDNF as a therapeutic target for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Finally, this GDNF-mediated autoregulatory positive feedback mechanism may explain the long-lasting actions of Ibogaine to reduce drug and alcohol self-administration and may have implications for the treatment of addiction. GDNF acts as a negative regulator of biochemical and behavioral adaptations to drugs of abuse and alcohol. Therefore, agents that activate the GDNF pathway and/or increase GDNF message may be useful drugs to treat addiction, and our current work implies that short-term treatment with such agents may result in long-lasting changes in addictive phenotypes.
http://www.fasebj.org/content/20/13/2420.summary

Hi Madelyn - this sounds so far the most promising and I wish it will be the hit IF...Can it be a dietary supplement using Dr Mash's formula? As a supplement does not need NDC...

Last I corresponded with Dr. Mash (couple years ago) she headed a clinic in St. kitts, unable to utilize the substance in the US. There had not been a patient with PD whom she treated. there are clinics in Europe--Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, and in Mexico --utilizing Ibogaine therapy, though only for addictions. (rumored that Keith Richards cured his heroin habit with Ibogaine therapy, though have not substantiated this).
The substance is in clinical trials at UCSF at present for alcohol addiction, not PD. To my knowledge, there are no studies looking at the use of Ibogaine in PD.
If you are interested, please email Dr. Mash. She was a professor of Parkinson's Research at univ Miami at the time of our discussions. Her email address is:
d.mash@miami.edu
madelyn

Here is Dr. Blaylock's newsletter that talks about immunoexcitotoxicity in plain English. It also talks about the supplements, and his parents. Very interesting.

http://www.healthymoneyvine.com/supp...parkinsons.pdf