[EsthersDoll]

Happy New Year!


I just came across this article about BCAA's, which are amino acids, and how researchers think when taken as a supplement that they could help people recovering from mTBI and MTBI.

http://www.naturalnews.com/027849_am...in_damage.html

Researchers are going to give people with mTBI and MTBI BCAA's in new studies.


Here's an older study where researchers discovered that BCAA's helped people recovering from Severe TBI.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16181934


Personally, I just ordered some. I read that if you're going to take them, it's best to take supplements that are 50 percent leucine, 25 percent isoleucine, and 25 percent valine and B6 is needed to synthesize the amino acids.

If you're healing from a brain injury, your doctor has probably already told you to take a B Complex regularly and B12 daily. (My neurologist told me to!) So that's where you'll get some B6 for the amino acids. But you might also want to get a BCAA supplement with a little B6 in it for good measure. Of course make sure the supplement you want to try is approved by your health care professionals.


Again:

**Don't forget to write this stuff down so you can ask your Dr. about whether you should try it. You want to make sure you talk about it with them first so they don't interfere with any drugs you might be taking, etc..




(I suffered a complex severe concussion which caused increased intracranial pressure for six months before the Dr.'s discovered it... the accident was about 18 months ago. I'm very impatient to get better.)

[Mark in Idaho]

This sounds like good information. Good find.

BCAA's are also in meat (muscle) protein, accounting for 35% of the essential amino acids in muscle proteins. This is why eating meat is recommended for better brain health. It is very difficult if not impossible to get a complete complement of essential amino acids from a vegetarian diet. BCAA's are Branched Chain Amino Acids.

The flip side of this is that lower levels of BCAA's can cause an improvement in blood sugar regulation.

I doubt many neurologist have recommended B vitamins for their PCS patients. Most doctors I have mentioned my vitamin regimen to have discounted its value. Estersdoll, you are fortunate to have a neuro who is ahead of the pack.

Here is some interesting information about BCAA's taken from http://www.dcnutrition.com/aminoacid...cordNumber=132

<The BCAA are not without side effects. Leucine alone, for example, exacerbates pellagra and can cause psychosis in pellagra patients by increasing excretion of niacin in the urine. Leucine may lower brain serotonin and dopamine. A dose of 3 g of isoleucine added to the niacin regime has cleared leucine-aggravated psychosis in schizophrenic patients. Isoleucine may have potential as an antipsychotic treatment.

Leucine is more highly concentrated in foods than other amino acids. A cup of milk contains 800 mg of leucine and only 500 mg of isoleucine and valine. A cup of wheat germ has about 1.6 g of leucine and 1 g of isoleucine and valine. The ratio evens out in eggs and cheese. One egg and an ounce of most cheeses each contain about 400 mg of leucine and 400 mg of valine and isoleucine. The ratio of leucine to other BCAA is greatest in pork, where leucine is 7 to 8 g and the other BCAA together are only 3 to 4 g.

In serum, BCAA, particularly leucine, are great producers of energy under many kinds of severe stress, such as trauma, surgery, liver failure, infection, fever, starvation, muscle training and weight lifting. BCAA supplements, while now used only preoperatively for malnourished patients, should be used in all stress situations. For example, BCAA may replace aspirin therapy for fever.

In sum, BCAA therapies have great potential in the medicine of the future which seeks better health by imitating natural mechanisms created within the body.>

I will continue to enjoy hamburgers, cheese and my unhomogenized milk.

Now, if I could only find a good supply of A2 milk. It is free of the BCM7 (beta-casomorphin7) that most high volume milk producers sell that crosses the blood brain barrier with opoids.

[EsthersDoll]

Thanks for the additional information Mark!

Funny enough, I never really ate a lot of red meat (and didn't eat ANY for ten years at one point in my life) until after the brain injury I received in the auto accident on 7-28-10. Since then I've been craving steaks, ham and hamburgers. After I learned that protein is necessary to hep heal the brain the craving made a lot more sense to me.

Originally Posted by Mark in Idaho

Estersdoll, you are fortunate to have a neuro who is ahead of the pack.

I'm *very* lucky!! The first neurologist kept telling me I was going to get better, but I degraded significantly in the first six months after the initial injury. The neuro I have now is the one who discovered I had the iicp (increased intracranial pressure) as a result of the initial injury and she ordered a spinal tap to relieve the pressure about a year ago and I've been getting better ever since. I owe her my life! By the by, she teaches neurology at the USC School of Medicine.