The Inner Life of the Cell « XVIVO

The Inner Life of the Cell « XVIVO

Low level laser therapy for traumatic brain injury

Proc. SPIE 7552, 755206 (2010)

http://link.aip.org/link/?PSISDG/7552/755206/1

Crash Course in CLRT

Time: Yesterday, Mid afternoon

Scene: “The Lab”/ Wise Chiropractic and Wellness

Patient: “Bob”, retired white male, early seventies

Chief Complaints: Ten years of terrible balance and no equilibrium, leaning forward all the time, some lower back and leg pain (mild), constant numbness and burning in his feet...and oh yeah: whenever he walks more than 5 feet, he cannot stop.

Sounds like the beginning to a bad joke, right?

A guy walks into a chiropractor’s office and crashes headfirst into the wall.

The Doctor says...

(I haven’t thought of a good punchline yet.)

That’s right, Bob can start walking just fine, but once he’s rolling, he can’t slow down or stop without crashing into walls or furniture. Inconvenient, to say the least. He certainly won’t be touring any china shops anytime soon.

This condition had started over ten years ago, but had been getting seriously worse over the last two years. Bob tended to downplay his own problems-- he was mostly just upset he couldn’t play golf for the last decade, but the looks on the faces of his wife and daughter clearly indicated a high level of frustration, exasperation, even desperation... in other words, this situation was drastically decreasing the quality of ALL of their lives.

Bob seemed lucid enough in conversation, but his wife told me he was having trouble remembering things. When I saw his forward-slumped standing posture, I immediately thought of Parkinson’s, but those patients have more trouble initiating action, not ceasing it. He needed a walker, but refused one, so he carried a cane as a compromise with his wife. Unfortunately, the cane did nothing to slow him down, keep him up, or keep him from lunging forward, so he still pitched into things regularly.

Previous diagnoses and medical treatments had focused on spinal stenosis, peripheral neuropathy, MS, high cholesterol, herpes-type viral infections...you name the specialist, they said, and they’ve been to see ‘em. You name the test, and Bob’s had it. You name the drug, and he’s been on it. He had also been under chiropractic care, lots of massage therapy, and he “even tried acupuncture” a few times. However, nothing in a decade had done ANYTHING to slow him-- or his condition-- down.

Current medications listed were a statin(!) for high cholesterol, Lyrica for peripheral neuropathy, and a beta blocker for high blood pressure. I asked him how long he had been on a cholesterol drug, he said “Oh, about 30 years.”

I did a spit-take. “Say what!? Which ones?”

“Mostly Lipitor for 15 years, then switched to Zocor, then Vytorin and Crestor...”

This was red flag numero uno.

Statins, especially the last two he mentioned, are notorious for causing peripheral neuropathy, and the longer you are on them, the more likely these “side-effects” will show up. Three decades of statin use, with progressively stronger drugs, can cause a lot of serious neurological problems if unchecked. A plan of action was formulating in my mind, as we typically do really well with peripheral neuropathy cases. Get him on some CoQ10 stat, lots of essential fatty acids, give him some chiropractic adjustments and CLRT treatments... he should respond fairly well.

However the real bomb dropped a few minutes later, when his wife casually mentions his... wait for it... pernicious anemia of 50 years! At this point, chocolate milk flew out of my nose! (Or would have, had I been drinking it. Keep in mind, this is 24 minutes into the case history before they let me in on that slightly significant tidbit.)

“Oh, but it’s been under control,” his wife continued. “He takes a B12 shot every two weeks, and his hemoglobin is fine.” Obviously the anemia part had been more or less under control, but the B12 in the shot was not getting to his nervous system for some reason. When I looked it up to refresh my memory, I saw that almost ALL of his neurological symptoms could be caused by advanced B12 deficiency! I looked over all the MRIs (lumbar, cervical, brain) and they were all clear. Nothing of any medical interest at all, and his chiropractic findings were merely a hypo-lordotic neck curve and some serious forward head carriage. All of the sudden this was a lot more complicated.

I recommended a conservative trial of chiropractic and cranial laser treatments, and before I treated him, I asked him to walk up and down the waiting room to see him in action. Sure enough, with his head down he gained speed from one end to the other, and then he went through the open door into my adjusting room, and a second later we heard the muffled bang of his lower body hitting my adjusting table.

His wife said, “See?”

Yep. I saw.

With him supine on the table, I examined the active and passive ROM of all his lower extremity joints. His ankles were especially rigid with very little motion in any direction. I adjusted his ankles, knees and hips with the Impulse adjusting instrument, which taps at 6 Hz, and is an excellent way to stimulate joint proprioceptors. Then I adjusted his atlas as a “double anterior” listing, tapping from A-P on both TP’s.

Next I used my 200mW red laser and bathed his cranium/cortex in light. The points that I chose first were the cranial reflex pathways for the calves, ankles and hips, and C1. After that I lasered the “executive decision” areas of the prefrontal cortex, the medial PFC( mPFC), and the major chronic stress area for men, the right orbital PFC (rOPFC). Total laser time was about a minute and a half.

Like Dr. Frankenstein raising his unholy creation for the first time, I slowly brought the table to upright and had Bob stand up. First thing that was evident was his posture: instead of stooping over like Nixon looking for seashells on the beach, he was fully upright with his head and shoulders pulled back.

His wife was the first to comment. “Oh my GAWD, Bob! You’re standing up straight!”

Bob shrugged. “Yeah I guess so.” He shrugged his shoulders a bit. He was mildly impressed.

Take a walk, I said. And he did exactly that: he casually strolled across the room, chatting to us about something (I don’t recall what as he was headed towards a glass table with a lamp on it), but as he got near it, he stopped on a dime, pirouetted, and turned around. He sauntered back toward us, turned around again, a did another lap, still chatting.

His wife’s jaw was hanging wide open. “You STOPPED!”

Bob shrugged again as if to say “Yeah, what’s the big deal?”

“Oh my GAWD daddy, you STOPPED!” His daughter was also impressed.

He made a few more successful laps back and forth.

I gave them my nutritional recommendations, and after that he made it to the bathroom without crashing, the front desk without leaning on it, and to his car without any help whatsoever.

I scheduled him for two days later to check on him, and when he came back in, he said that he had walked around the entire Publix supermarket “like a normal person” the day before for the first time in 3 years. No motorized scooter was needed this time.

This impressed him.

As I have only seen him twice so far, I don’t know if he will completely recover... but I can tell you one thing, it’s a helluva start. The initial results with Cranial Laser Reflex Technique, chiropractic, and basic nutrition are extremely promising.

Oh yeah. I thought of the rest of the joke.

A guy walks into a multidisciplinary doctor’s clinic and crashes headfirst into the wall.

The MD says ”Looks like you need a little pick-me-up. Here’s an antidepressant.”

The PT says “Your problem is weak abs. Lets strengthen your core.”

The straight DC says, “Yep. Definitely an atlas subluxation.”

The acupuncturist says, “The dampness in your spleen has stagnated your chi.”

The CLRT practitioner says “Your holographic biophoton field is hemorrhaging light! Get me a laser, stat!”

The front desk girl points to the small piece of plastic connecting his shoes and says, “I think he needs to quit stealing shoes from K-Mart.”

Ok, I’ll keep working on that one.

The video following this post is from Bob's second visit, where he demonstrates his rediscovered ability to stop and turn.

‘Til next time from the Lab,

Dr. Nick

PS: We are holding 2 “Crash Courses” in CLRT in the UK this June! Come learn this amazing technique that takes the hard work out of great results.

Visit www.lightforhealth.co.uk/education for more information.

CLRT FAQ

Hi Dr Wise,
I am wondering how long your results typically last with the Cranial Laser Reflex Technique? Do people tend to still need a few treatments per week in the beginning or do they heal faster? I saw you treat that lady with bilateral shoulder restriction and I wanted to know how long she kept the increased range of motion and how many times you needed to treat her.
Thanks for your time.
Dr. M

Hi Doc

Good question.

The results you'll get will vary in the length of time they last... just like with an adjustment or any other treatment. However in performing CLRT and correcting the information stored at the cranial reflex, you are greatly enhancing the healing process by working on a major contributor to someone's chronic problem. And that contributor is there in every case, whether you realize it or not.

It depends mostly on the nature of the problem, the length of chronicity, and the stresses they are under... if a person's pain is due to repetitive stress and they go and do the same thing again and again, of course the immediate results you get won't last very long. But repeat treatments and lifestyle/ergonomics education will help.

Every case will vary to some degree... sometimes you'll just get temporary relief with CLRT (couple of days), but sometimes you can actually "FIX" the person in one try (as much as someone can truly be "fixed," right?) It just depends.

When first starting off, put someone on a regular treatment schedule just like you normally would, and do CLRT along with your adjustments... I usually start at 2x week for moderate cases. As things start to hold longer, we reduce the frequency of visits and teach them where to stimulate on their own head with "acupencture." (You'll see...) This will provide them with relief at home and reduce the need for meds.

The lady in the video with the shoulder problem? Well, She is "fixed," as far as that problem goes: no pain and good ROM to this day. However, she has a very high stress job (oncology nurse), and her shoulders are her weak spot, so she comes in once a month for maintenance so they don't regress.

Take care,

Dr. Nick

Good Story from CLRT Practitioner

Here's an email I received recently from Dr. Norman Price in California. He's a DC who specializes in BioCranial work, and has enjoyed CLRT immensely. His story highlights the effectiveness of the repetitive percussion with a ballpoint pen... and the importance of improvisation.

Hi Nick,
I thought you would appreciate hearing about a patient that I worked with last week while visiting my kids in Portland, OR.

I have an acupuncturist friend who allows me to see pts. in her office while visiting and also asks me to work on pts. of hers. I was telling her about the CLRT work and she asked me to work on a new pt. who had a pretty bad car accident that spun her around pretty violently. Ordinarily, I would do my Bio Cranial work first, but that didn't happen this time. My friend was more interested in seeing if the CLRT would be helpful. Only challenge was that I forgot to bring my laser with me, so I grabbed the nearest ball pt. pen.

On the previous visit, just touching the area of the spine around T5-T7 set off a rather strong vertigo response, so that she couldn't even walk. So, I decided to muscle test the area and found profound weakness on the right around T6/T7. (I chose the right side to test first because of her skin coloration and facial presentation.) I did several taps on the area and re-tested with good results. She started to feel some vertigo and had to lie down. That's when I left her in the capable hands of my acupuncturist friend who later wrote me the following:

Wow! She did great. I did some ear points only and let her cook for 15 minutes. She said in the middle of the treatment her whole face felt like a warmth passed over it. Remember how pasty she was coming in? Was radiant going out. Felt the best she had in a week. No vertigo/nausea. Woo Hoo. Thanks for the help. Please send info on your new technique.

I sent her links to your website so she can check it out.

Hope all is well,
Norm

Dr. Norman Price
Bio Cranial Practitioner
Senior Bio Cranial Instructor

When memory-related neurons fire in sync with certain brain waves, memories last

When memory-related neurons fire in sync with certain brain waves, memories last

When memory-related neurons in the brain fire in sync with certain theta (3-8 Hz) brain waves, the resulting image recognition and memories are stronger than if this synchronization does not occur.

"Theta oscillations are known to be involved in memory formation, and previous studies have identified correlations between memory strength and the activity of certain neurons, but the relationships between these events have not been understood. Our research shows that when memory-related neurons are well coordinated to theta waves during the learning process, memories are stronger," said Adam N. Mamelak, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

War on Drugs? Meet the War on Cheesecake.

Dopamine D2 receptors in addiction-like reward dysfunction and compulsive eating in obese rats

• Paul M Johnson

• & Paul J Kenny.

  Nature Neuroscience

  (2010)

  doi:10.1038/nn.2519

Abstract

We found that development of obesity was coupled with emergence of a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses. Similar changes in reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin are considered to be crucial in triggering the transition from casual to compulsive drug-taking. Accordingly, we detected compulsive-like feeding behavior in obese but not lean rats, measured as palatable food consumption that was resistant to disruption by an aversive conditioned stimulus. Striatal dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) were downregulated in obese rats, as has been reported in humans addicted to drugs. Moreover, lentivirus-mediated knockdown of striatal D2Rs rapidly accelerated the development of addiction-like reward deficits and the onset of compulsive-like food seeking in rats with extended access to palatable high-fat food. These data demonstrate that overconsumption of palatable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuits and drives the development of compulsive eating. Common hedonic mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.

Silencing the brain with light

Silencing the brain with light

A team led by neuroengineer Edward Boyden has found a class of proteins that, when inserted into neurons, allow them to be turned off with rays of yellow-green light. The silencing is near instantaneous and easily reversible.

This kind of selective brain silencing, reported in the Jan. 7 issue of Nature, could not only help treat brain disorders but also allows researchers to investigate the role of different types of neurons in normal brain circuits and how those circuits can go wrong.

“We hope to enable a broad platform of molecular tools for controlling brain activity, thus enabling new general therapeutic tools, and new ways of studying brain function,” says Boyden, the Benesse Career Development Professor in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

‘Clean and digital’

Boyden first demonstrated the use of light to reduce brain activity in 2007. However, the feat was performed in cells, not living animals, and the silencing was not as precise. In the new study, the researchers used a different protein — one that inhibits neurons more strongly, silences more brain tissue and can be repeatedly activated because it returns to its original state within milliseconds of light activation.

With the new protein, called Arch, brain silencing is “extremely clean and digital,” says Boyden. “The other one was more like a volume knob turning up and down.”

Boyden and his colleagues combined genetic and optical techniques to control neuron activity, a strategy that has come to be called “optogenetic.” First, they engineered brain cells of living mice to express the gene for the Arch protein, which functions as a proton pump, moving protons across the cell membrane to alter the cell’s voltage. The proton pumps are light-sensitive, so they pump protons out of cells when activated by yellow-green light. That lowers voltage inside the cells, silencing their firing.

In their previous work, the researchers used a light-sensitive chloride pump called halorhodopsin, which changes neurons’ voltage by pumping chloride ions into the cell. However, they weren’t satisfied with it and started looking for a better chloride pump, examining proteins from a range of bacteria, plants and fungi. They couldn’t find a chloride pump that offered the kind of control they were seeking, but discovered the new Arch proton pump in a strain of archaebacteria called Halorubrum sodomense that lives in the Dead Sea.

“This is the result of mining the wealth of the natural world — genomic diversity and ecological variation — to discover new tools that can empower scientists to study complex systems like the brain,” says Boyden. “We're using natural tools isolated from the wild to help us understand how neural circuits work.” This strategy has long been used in molecular and cellular biology, resulting in tools like restriction enzymes, PCR and GFP, but Boyden's work only recently has been applied to tackle complex systems-level biological problems.

One major advantage of the new pumps is that they can be used over and over again: They recover their ability to be light-activated within seconds, rather than the minutes required for the old tool, halorhodopsin, to reprime itself. That is critical to neuroscientists who want to study the role of particular cell types in different tasks, says Edward Callaway, professor of systems neurobiology at the Salk Institute, who was not involved in the research.

“If you have to wait a long time to get recovery, you just can’t compare different conditions quickly,” says Callaway, who studies vision-processing circuits in the brain. The new channels offer a “much more practical” way to use optogenetics for animal studies such as testing which neurons are involved in different visual tasks, he says.

To achieve brain silencing in mice, the researchers implanted an externally controllable light source inside the mice’s brains. While the current device requires mice to be wired up to an external control, the researchers are designing a fully wireless system.

Boyden's group, working with the Desimone lab at the McGovern Institute at MIT, is now performing pre-clinical testing of this approach in non-human primates, to assess its safety as a potential therapy for epilepsy, chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder. The team has also developed, in collaboration with other groups at MIT, hardware for optical neural stimulation, which could be valuable for neural prosthetic purposes.

The MIT researchers have also discovered other proton pumps activated by different colors of light, combining these pumps with previously discovered tools allows researchers to selectively silence different brain regions using red and blue light. “One beautiful thing about this is we can inactivate different projections in the same brain,” says Boyden.

In future studies, the researchers plan to use their neuron-silencing tools to examine the neural circuits of cognition and emotion, and to determine whether the new pumps are safe and effective in monkeys — a critical step toward potentially using optical control to treat human diseases.

MIT TechTV – Ed Boyden: National Science Foundation interview

MIT TechTV – Ed Boyden: National Science Foundation interview

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Hot Stuff! Brand New Cranial Laser Reflex Technique Case Study Video!

Here is a new video of a patient that came in yesterday for the first time. She was referred by another chiropractor in town who sent her for evaluation and a Cranial Laser Reflex Technique treatment for spasms after a stroke 2.5 years ago. She has also been under the care of several MD's, PT's, neurologists, etc during this time. (Luckily she was very agreeable to me videoing the session, and luckily I had an extern handy to hold my iPhone.)

The total visit lasted about 25 minutes, but the video is edited to 10 minutes long as per the youtube limits. Most of what I cut was me talking, and repeating some of the same treatments again.

I start off with lasering the Cranial Reflex Pathways for the biceps and forearm muscles with a 200mW 650nm red laser (on half battery power, probably). This immediately reduced the tone of these muscles that had been in spasm for 2.5 years. I then perform some general cranial adjustments, both with my hands and with light taps from the Impulse adjusting instrument. I then release the traps, pecs, and rhomboids, etc with more CLRT.

Then I bust out the Resonant Frequency Wand and run the normalizing frequencies for biceps, forearm flexors, etc. The change was immediately apparent. The biceps frequency elongated that muscle and allowed me to straighten her arm, and the freq for pronator teres was especially helpful at untwisting her foream and wrist. After a few minutes of this, I was able to fully extend her arm, waaay farther than it had been for years. She reported that she felt a tingling in her arm as I was working on her head, and that the treatment felt "awesome."

The difficulty with a case like this lies in the fact that she has been stuck in rigid flexion so long and these muscles have shortened considerably, and she will have to un-learn all the coping strategies she has had to create along the way. But overall, her response after a single treatment makes me think she'll do very well if we keep this up.

There's no limit to the capacity of the human body to heal itself... if one is open to the possibilities.

Pretty cool stuff...Watch.

Brain Stuff

I've been looking at loads of Xrays and MRI's since I've been here in India, and yesterday I saw an interesting case... actually, I saw about 10 cases yesterday that would qualify as highly unusual, but this one stood out.

I first met Mr. Shah in 2005 on my first trip to India. He is the best friend of my partner here, so I have spent a lot of time with him in my 3 trips here. Shahbhai (Shah-bay), as they call him, is the quintessential businessman: a bonafide real estate mogul, builder of highrises, and owner of 3 factories which employ over 3000 people. His cel phone never stops ringing and it is hardly away from his right ear for more than 2 minutes at a time. He is the most serious, business minded, and some might say...humorless... people I have ever met. I called him Spockbhai once... joke didn't translate too well. Swell guy though.

Shahbhai had a stroke 2 years ago from a big clot that got stuck in a cerebral artery on the right side, and this was clearly visible on the MRI of his brain that he got right afterwards. The left-sided paralysis he had is gone, and he has improved very much with chiropractic care. Before I adjusted him this time, I sent him for a follow-up MRI of the brain (costs about 42 USD!) to see if the clot was still there. Thankfully the new films showed it was totally gone, but with some scar tissue left.

But what struck me was this... his left hemisphere was at least 20% larger than his right.

I checked all the films, old and new, and it was like this on all of them, so it wasn't atrophy from after the stroke. On the radiologist's report, they called it age-related atrophy... he's 60... but it was clearly not from a normal aging process...

These are the questions I had...

The left brain typically controls logical, linear thinking while the right brain handles creative expression. Knowing Spockbhai's tendencies for 100% focus on business and finances, I wondered if this was from decades of exercising the left hemisphere and neglect of the emotional side?

Or the other chilling thought was that it was from the constant celphone use? ( I asked, and healways holds it to his right ear. ) If anyone could cook his cortex with a celphone, he'd be a top contender for sure. He'll take a business call even while his guru/living god is talking. For real.

I know this is pure speculation here, but this is what I wrote down on a prescription pad for him before he left.

"Drink lots more panni (water.)

More art, music, dancing and poetry.

Less celphone.

Live long and prosper."

Can't hurt...