Another Supplement Tied to 20% Less Seizures?

In those who suffer from migraine headaches and seizures, anything that can help to reduce the number of attacks they have is a welcome addition. Clearly lifestyle and supplementation play a strong (if not stronger) role in the management of both migraine headaches and seizures along with the mainstream medical approach of pharmacological management. For many sufferers, this information is rarely shared by their physicians.

Before we illuminate today's brain protecting nutrient, we need to cover a little basic physiology. Those of you with very good memories will undoubtably recall that the cells of our organs are made up of a lipid bilayer. Consider our membranes as sort of a fatty moat made up of bunches of molecules that look like a head with legs. On the outsides of both sides of the moat we have the heads, which are soluble in water. The legs that dangle from the heads face toward the center of the moat, meeting each other in the center. These legs are made up of fats that do not dissolve in water.

All by itself, not much can pass through this moat. Things that dissolve in water can make it past the heads, but not the legs in the center. Things that are fat soluble can't make it past the heads to get into the moat at all. A relatively impenetrable moat.

But things still need to get in and out of the cell. The cell needs to get messages in and out, it needs nutrients in and out and things manufactured inside the cell need to get outside of the cell.

The cell does this through the use of pores embedded in the membrane. Some go all the way through the moat, some only go partway. An important factor of how well messages are transmitted, or NOT transmitted, is the health of the cell membrane. Lower quality fats (such as trans fats) will impede healthy cell communication.

On the flip side, higher amounts of healthier fats in the cell membrane ensure that messages that are supposed to be passed along are passed along. Overall, it just makes for a healthier, happier cell.

What does this mean for a condition like epilepsy? Seizures and migraine headaches can occur when a cell is not healthy enough to communicate effectively with its neighbor. This can mean that an inhibitory neuron (that shuts down its neighboring cell) may not be effective at calming a connecting cell. Or, it could mean that an individual brain cell fires before it is supposed to fire, beginning a cascade of wild messages that trigger a headache or a seizure.

A recent study in the March issue of Epilepsy and Behavior demonstrated that the fish oil DHA was able to lower seizure rates. The study was small and non-randomized, but is consistent with our understanding of what triggers seizures as well as prior studies.

Of the ten people in the study receiving 1,000 mg of DHA, 6 had a reduction in the number of seizures. One patient had a marked reduction in seizure activity. Overall, the reduction in seizure activity was 16%. Quite an accomplishment for something as safe and inexpensive as fish oils.

Of course, the big question is, why had fish oils not been a recommendation prior to this study? Even that single patient with the marked reduction in seizure activity could've had a massive impact on his or her quality of life by such a simple intervention long before this study.

Read the study here http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S152550501100686X

Dr. Bogash has a passion for understanding physiology, the medical research and how the combination of these two can lower the risk of disease or manage current chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis or heart disease. Visit http://lifecarechiropractic.com/blog/?p=blogroll to sign up for Dr. Bogash's Rantings, a biweekly email that summarizes the daily blog posts related to improving society's health.

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Brain Damaged From Migraines or Seizures? Try These 6 Tips

In my experience, many migraine or seizure sufferers do not fully understand that, even when headaches or seizures are not occurring, there is brain damage occurring. Luckily, there are many proven ways to help protect your brain from these dangerous conditions.

With that being said, it is common for mainstream medicine to recommend medications that control the seizure or headache, but do nothing to help protect the brain. This is obviously a severe shortcoming and a failing in the way we treat migraines and seizures in society today. It is indescribably important for a patient to understand that the ultimate responsibility for their health lies within. It does NOT lie with the physician. They can guide and coach you, but the job of improving the health of your brain is yours alone.

Brain cells require a massive amount of energy (in the form of ATP) to function normally. The mitochondria inside of a cell is where this valuable ATP is made. You can't make all this energy needed to run a healthy brain cell without waste byproducts. Imagine lighting a fire to cook or heat water. When you do this, smoke is going to be produced as a by-product of the fire. And we all have heard that in a house fire more victims die of smoke inhalation rather than the fire itself. So this smoke can be dangerous. In physiology, this "smoke" produced as a by-product of generating ATP is termed "free radicals."

You may have heard of free radicals before. These free radicals are hostile little molecules that damage anything they touch. For those of you that used to play with fireworks as a child, the little "buzzing bee" type of firework always reminds me of a free radical. When they were lit, these little fireworks started to spin very rapidly in a circle, faster and faster, spitting small flames out the side. The end result is a small circle of fire spinning and buzzing all over the ground. So, picture this little buzzing bee molecule bouncing around inside of your cell, damaging anything it touches. Proteins in the cell, your DNA, even the mitochondria that produces the free radicals in the first place while making ATP. All can be damaged by free radicals.

Complicating this bad situation is the fact that the mitochondria do not do a very good job of protecting themselves from free radical damage. So the one part of the cell that we really, really want to protect and keep from being damaged, can't really protect itself very well. Too much damage and the mitochondria itself dies off, leaving the poor little neuron with less ATP factories to run the way it's supposed to.

This leads to what I refer to as a "sick neuron."

In general, if we stop a sick neuron from communicating with its healthy neighbor by loading people up with drugs and stopping the communication, we think that we've been successful. All we've done is stop the communication, but we haven't fixed the sick neuron. In many cases, that neuron continues to degenerate. If one neuron is going to be sick, it is highly likely that the situation is present for other neurons to be sick as well. Merely controlling the headache or the seizure with medications, rather than a complete program to heal the brain cells, is not optional. It is required if you'd like to truly improve the state of the way your brain is functioning and protect your cognitive ability for years to come.

Given that the mitochondria are so incredibly important in the process of brain health, what can we do to protect them inside of our brain cells? Here are some ideas.

1) Manage stress - is what you are stressing about as important as damaging your brain? Probably not.

2) Avoid environmental chemicals. There is a barrage of more than 82,000 chemicals registered with the FDA that we are exposed to on a daily basis. This ranges from having your house sprayed for bugs or weeds, to all the pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that are used on our conventionally grown produce. We have tens of thousands of chemicals in our environment that we were never been exposed to before and that our bodies are unsure of how to eliminate. As an example, there are the flame retardants built into things like clothing, mattresses, pillows, dog beds and furniture. As of July 2007, mattresses were required to have a much higher level of flame resistance; the amount of chemicals required to make it this flame resistant are much higher. These chemicals than show up in our bloodstream and may contribute to health problems by destroying our mitochondria. Another example is the use of nonstick cooking surfaces, which is achieved through the use of chemicals, which also show up in the bloodstream.

3) Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners. Period.

4) Avoid exposure to heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and aluminum. This can be achieved by taking your shoes off at the door, avoiding certain fish known to be high in mercury (like albacore tuna, ahi and swordfish) and staying away from cigarette smoke and areas where people commonly smoke.

5) Supplements like L-carnitine, Coenzyme Q10, whey protein and resveratrol have been shown to improve the health of our mitochondria.

#6 is clearly one of the most powerful methods to improve both the number and function of our mitochondria: Calorie restriction without nutrient restriction. This means that your 1200 calories / day comes from broccoli, not a Big Mac and supersized fries. With this approach, our cells have to use every scrap of glucose and every nutrient to function. Our cells run a tighter ship, creating more efficient and greater numbers of mitochondria. The opposite is true with too many calories-our cells get lazy and mitochondrial function heads south.

A study in the April issue of Free Radical Biology and Research provides further support of the concept that calorie restriction stimulates the production of more mitochondria in our brain cells, thereby protecting our brains and potentially reducing both the frequency and severity of migraine headaches and seizures, while working on truly healing the brain and eliminating these conditions.

For more reading http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891584912000391.

Dr. Bogash has a passion for understanding physiology, the medical research and how the combination of these two can lower the risk of disease or manage current chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension, obesity, osteoporosis or heart disease. Visit http://lifecarechiropractic.com/blog/?p=blogroll to sign up for Dr. Bogash's Rantings, a biweekly email that summarizes the daily blog posts related to improving society's health.

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Types of Seizures

When people think of someone having a seizure most would think of them dropping to the ground and their whole body convulsing. This is where people think wrong. There are several different types of seizures out there that people don't even know exist. Just because someone has epilepsy or seizures doesn't mean they fall to the ground every time they have one. I'm going to go through the different types of seizures so people may have a better understanding of them.

Seizures are placed into two different categories: generalized seizures and partial seizures.

Generalized: deal with electrical charge to both sides of the brain.

Partial: deal with electrical charge in one limited area of the brain or just one side of the brain.

Generalized Seizures

Let's start off by getting digging into generalized seizures. Some of the different types of seizures in this category are the type of how most people would think of a seizure.

Tonic-Clonic: known as the "grand mal" and the main seizure that people think of when they hear the word. The person will drop to the floor and almost every muscle stiffens while the person jerks. It usually lasts 1 - 3 minutes and the person can easily injure themself.
Absence: This is when a person blanks out anywhere from a couple seconds to 30 seconds and is unaware of their surroundings. They may blink their eyes repetitively and eyes may also roll up into the back of their head. People who have these types of seizures may have 30 - 60 a day.
Atonic: In this seizure people basically lose all muscle and strength and just drop to the ground. They stay conscious and aware during this type of seizure but doesn't mean it's not hard on their body.
Myoclonic: Most people would not even see these as seizures because they are so simple. They are very brief jerks of a muscle or a group of muscles. They only last for a second or two. It's like the sudden jerk you may feel that wakes you up when falling asleep.
Tonic: Causes a person's body to stiffen up and lasts for about 20 seconds. The person doesn't always fall but can lose balance when muscles stiffen or if they have multiple seizures in a row. This particular seizure often happens while a person is sleeping.
Clonic: Not often seen alone and only consists of repeated jerking. The jerking can't be stopped even if someone tries to restrain person having the seizure. This type of seizure usually only happens with the body stiffening part or "grand mal" as I talked about before.

Partial Seizures

Partial seizures from what I know can be extremely hard to diagnose because people do some weird things during these seizures.

Simple Partial: The one thing different about the simple partial are people remain alert and can recall the whole thing. But the way it is varies from person to person. It can be anything from a pain in ones stomach, a feeling of deja vu, or the sound of ringing. There is a whole list of things that happen to people who have these. They only last up to two minutes.
Complex Partial: If you see somebody have one of these you may think they are just crazy. People become unaware of everything going on around them. The person will normally repeat actions things like picking at clothing, making noises, swiping at the air etc. The person may also do embarrassing things such as start taking off their clothing or get themselves into a dangerous situation. They don't last very long but the person is normally confused from 15 minutes to hours afterwards and don't remember a thing.

The seizures I talked about are some of the most common seizures a person will see. I used to think there was only one type of seizure until I started having them. I hope everybody who read this will be more aware of people who have epilepsy or seizures.

Want to know more on seizures or what it's like to live with them daily. Go to http://seizuresoftrav.blogspot.com/.

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