[lurkingforacure]

I have posted here before about Dr. Peter Jannetta, who is a world-famous neurosurgeon, famous for his microvascular decompression of a particular artery in the brain which cures trigeminal neuralgia. He has been working on using MVD for Parkinson's, you can read my posts about this here on this forum, just search under "Jannetta".

In 2010, Dr. Jannetta did a study that linked a compressed brain artery to impaired glucose function, ie, diabetes. A LOT of PWP have diabetes and the link should not be ignored. Note that the 3 people in his study who did NOT experience glucose control after having MVD had a mean BMI of 7 points higher than the 7 patients who were helped (in other words, they were really fat). One diabetic got entirely off of his diabetes meds according to the study. Here's the link to this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2940091/

What can this mean?

Jannetta has said this: "MVD is not perfect, as nothing is perfect...We face a difficult hurdle in regard to some patients who suffer recurrent pain when other blood vessels begin to sag and rub against or compress the cranial nerve—a problem believed to result from aging.” This was from: http://www.fpa-support.org/wp-conten...ta-webpage.pdf

So if, as he suggests, our blood vessels change as we get older, and/or eat a poor diet, or are exposed to toxins or substantial stress (what physically happens to blood vessels when we are stressed?) or a combination of all of these, and they begin to sag and crowd each other, pinching and twisting one another where they were not pinched or twisted before....what might that mean?

We just do not have the technology to "see" those blood vessels in the brain at the level we need right now, the best MRI, the T3, although a significant improvement over the T1.5 used in most places, still cannot see that much, and certainly cannot see all of the arteries and veins and tiny capillaries in the brain. I am banking on the resolution of neurological vascular issues, which we cannot currently see, as holding the key to helping the most people with PD.

Consider:

exercise helps most PWP (increased blood flow, so even if there's a kink in the hose, more water is getting circulated)

Jannetta performed MVD on a lady who had both trigeminal neuralgia and well-documented PD, and she woke up without PD...18 months later, it began to reappear and when they looked at her brain, they found that the Teflon pad Jannetta had used to decompress the artery had slipped

in the Jannetta study linked above, MVD helped the majority (70%) of those with type 2 diabetes...many people with PD have diabetes and are not overweight, so the traditional explanation for their having diabetes (too fat) doesn't really work

Jannetta has already reported that close to 78% of PWP that he surveyed had vascular compression in the brain...granted it was a small group, but that is as high a correlation as I have seen in PD. I've posted about this before...

Jannetta is at Allegheny Hospital in Pennsylvania and was working on a trial for MVD in Parkinson's....if you have vascular compression on one side of the brain, you may qualify to be in his study.

If you do get to participate in Jannetta's study, share with us all here how you are doing if you can.