Natural Health Therapies - Parkinson's Disease is a degenerative disease of the nervous system which is caused by free radical damage to the basal brain ganglia that control muscle movement. This depletes a chemical called dopamine in the brain.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that carries messages from one nerve cell to another. In Parkinson's disease, the cells in the brain that manufacture dopamine are damaged or dying, and hence the brain loses the ability to manufacture this chemical.

Highly Recommended: The first thing we recommend for anyone who is experiencing symptoms of Parkinson's disease is to have their hair tested with a hair tissue mineral analysis. A hair analysis can determine which specific heavy metals are creating a toxic burden on your body and can give you an excellent baseline from which to measure the success of any type of heavy metal detoxification program you embark on.

Heavy metals like arsenic, aluminum, mercury, lead and cadmium are neurotoxins, which can often be one of the causes of autoimmune symptoms. Heavy metals greatly affect the body's ability to absorb important, life-sustaining nutrients.

The hair mineral analysis also tells you which essential minerals your body is needing more of, which it needs less of, and which important mineral ratios are imbalanced due to toxic elements. For example, Parkinson's patients usually have a severe copper deficiency. Copper is an essential element in the metabolism of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter. Low dopamine levels are common in patients suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Researchers have found that an imbalance of iron to copper may also play a role in Parkinson's disease as well as other neurological disorders. Parkinson's patients also tend to have elevated manganese levels. Cobalt deficiency is another factor in Parkinson's disease. The hair tissue analysis can also provide valuable insight into your metabolism and what dietary changes might be most helpful.

For more information on the hair tissue mineral analysis, scoll down the page or click here.

If you have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, you should be under the care of an experienced neurologist.  He or she will likely place you on L-dopa, a dopamine derivative, which may help to temporarily reduce the symptoms.  Supporting your body with good nutrition and a detoxification program to rid your body of metals and chemicals is highly recommended.  Specific supplemental interventions, such as glutathione, CoQ10, and antioxidant therapy is showing impressive results among holistic practitioners.

The Better Brain Book provides a very practical guide to treating neurological conditions with natural and safe remedies that have abundant scientific support. 

The nutritional and oxidative therapies that he recommends are part of a growing wave of scientifically based, complementary treatments. 

Glutathione therapy is having extremely impressive results for Parkinson’s Disease among holistic practitioners, and is highly recommended by such well-known alternative health doctors such as Dr. Julian Whitaker and Dr. Marcus Laux.  Dr. David Perlmutter, M.D. and Board Certified Neurologist, calls is “the glutathione miracle”.

Glutathione is a vital brain chemical that is one of the most important brain antioxidants.  That is, glutathione helps to preserve brain tissue by preventing damage by free radicals.  According to William Code, MD and Multiple Sclerosis survivor, glutatione levels in the body are an indicator of health and how long a person will live.  By the time you have a serious chronic disease such as  a neurodegenerative disorder, chronjc fatigue syndrome or even cancer, your glutathione levels are seriously depleted.

Glutathione has been found to be substantially reduced in almost all Parkinson’s disease patients.  According to Dr. Code, once diagnosed with either MS or Parkinsons, the body’s cellular glutathione is only 5% of what it should be. 

Supplementing glutathione either intravenously, with liposomal glutatione or with glutahtione precursors such as non-denatured whey protein powder can have remarkable effects.

Dr. Perlmutter quotes a landmark study from the Department of Neurology at the University of Sassari, Italy:

“In this research protocol, Parkinson’s patients received intravenous glutathione twice daily for 30 days.  The subjects were then evaluated at one month intervals up to six months.  The published results indicated that all patients improved significantly after glutathione therapy with a 42% decline in disability. 

Once glutathione was stopped, the therapeutic effects lasted 2-4 months.  Further, the researchers indicated…”glutathione has symptomatic efficacy and possibly retards the progression of the disease”.

To find out more about intravenous glutathione therapy, please call the Perlmutter Health Center at 239-649-7400, or the Whitaker Wellness Institute at 949-851-1510.

Glutathione is a supplement that is extremely difficult to absorb.  Most oral supplements are worthless, because the digestive tract destroys the nutrient before it can be absorbed. 

Supplements such as NAC can help your body make more glutathione, but the effect is mild. This is why intravenous therapy was once considered to be the only therapy that really works.

Now, however there is new liposomal technology that allows glutathione to be fully absorbed by the body. It survives the trip through your intestines because the glutathione is contained in microscopic little pouches called liposomes. Thus, the glutathione enters your bloodstream intact. 

According to Dr. Laux, liposomes were recently tested in rigorous scientific studies, and were found to have an amazing 90% absorption rate.  That’s comparable to intravenous glutathione therapy, for a fraction of the cost. 

While the actual cause of Parkinson's remains unknown, there are two related theories put out by the medical establishment as to what causes this destruction of certain brain cells.

One hypothesis is that the cells are destroyed by toxins within the body that the liver is unable to filter out because as the body ages, the liver loses its ability to work as efficiently and effectively as it once did.

Another theory is that exposure to environmental toxins, such as herbicides and pesticides that leach into the ground water, is responsible. In fact, the American Medical Association has recently declared that it believes the culprit for this devastating disorder to be pesticides, insecticides, herbicides and other inorganic chemicals.

And interestingly enough, the basis of many pesticides and insecticides is toxic metals such as arsenic (rat poison), cadmium (fertilizers) and lead. Some people with Parkinson's disease have been found to have high levels of lead in their brains.

In the book "The Truth About Where You Live", Benjamin Goldman reports extensive studies of pesticides and chemical toxicity as they relate to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Lou Gehrig's Disease. He also points out that Parkinson's has been correlated with rural farming practices throughout the country. In the U.S. alone, 1.3 million tons of pesticides are used each year, both in agriculture and for cosmetically altering the foods we eat.

According to a featured news article on MSNBC.com, the evidence that exposure to environmental toxins such as pesticides and herbicides causes Parkinson’s disease is stronger than its ever been before. To view the article, please click here.

Reducing the load of toxins on your body means eliminating preservatives, additives, food colorings, artificial sweeteners, monosodium glutamate (MSG) and artificial flavorings. It also means reducing exposure to airborne chemicals, such as perfumes and tobacco smoke, household chemicals, and pesticides and insecticides. Drink only filtered water, and prepare and store food in inert containers only (not plastics).

Tests that help to diagnose metal and chemical toxicity include blood tests, urine tests, and the analysis of hair, nails or other tissues. The most accurate of these are a chelation challenge test or a hair analysis.

Regular blood tests and urine tests are not accurate in diagnosing heavy metal toxicity, as they only tend to show what is happening in the body at that brief moment in time, and do not give the long-term picture.

This makes sense since the body works hard to keep the levels of nutrients in the bloodstream within fairly tight limits. If large fluctuations in mineral levels occurred, serious illness or even death would result.

A chelation challenge test needs to be performed by a doctor who specializes in chelation therapy. The patient is given a chelating drug, commonly DMPS or DMSA, and the patient's urine is collected and analyzed over a 24 hour period. This test is a highly accurate way of knowing just what heavy metals are present in the body.

The drawbacks to this method are that it requires a visit to a health care professional's office, it is expensive, and there is a possibility of side effects to the chelating drugs.

A hair analysis is good alternative way of determining what toxic metals are present in the body. In addition, it also measures the levels of essential minerals in the body, such as calcium, magnesium and zinc. This test can provide you with much-needed information about your body.

A tissue mineral analysis or hair analysis provides a unique reading of heavy metal and mineral levels in the cells over a two to three month period. It takes into consideration that toxins are stored in the tissues of the body, not in the blood.

For instance, you can have normal copper levels in the blood, but high copper levels in the tissues. The reason hair is used for testing mineral status and metabolic activity is because of its very nature.

Our hair is formed from clusters of specialized cells that make up the hair follicle. During the growth phase, the hair is exposed to the internal environment such as blood, lymph and extra-cellular fluids. As the hair continues to grow and reaches the surface of the skin, its outer layers harden, locking in the metabolic products accumulated during the period of formation. This biological processs provides a blueprint and lasting record of metal content and nutritional metabolic activity that has occured during this time.

The precise analytical method of determining the levels of minerals in the hair is a highly sophisticated technique: when performed to exacting standards and interpreted correctly, it may be used as a screening aid for determining mineral deficiencies, excesses, and/or imbalances. HTMA provides you and your healthcare professional with an economical and sensitive indicator of the long-term effects of diet, stress, toxic metal exposure and their effects on your mineral balance that is difficult to obtain through other clinical tests.

It is important for the attending healthcare professional to determine your mineral status as minerals are absolutely critical for life and abundant health. They are involved in and are necessary for cellular metabolism, structural support, nerve conduction, muscular activity, immune functions, anti-oxidant and endocrine activity, enzyme functions, water and acid/alkaline balance and even DNA function.

Many factors can affect mineral nutrition, such as: food preparation, dietary habits, genetic and metabolic disorders, disease, medications, stress, environmental factors, as well as exposure to heavy metals. Rarely does a single nutrient deficiency exist in a person today. Multiple nutritional imbalances however are quite common, contributing to an increased incidence of adverse health conditions. In fact, it is estimated that mild and sub-clinical nutritional imbalances are up to ten times more common than nutritional deficiency alone.

To get an idea of how helpful a hair tissue analysis can be, think about this: Researchers using tissue mineral analysis determined, more than 100 years after Napoloen Bonaparte's death, that he had been poisoned by arsenic. Even though his hair sample was tested more than a century after his death, it still revealed pathological amounts of arsenic that had gradually proved fatal.

A hair analysis usually needs to be obtained through a health care professional (which can be expensive). However, we offer a service that allows you to get a comprehensive hair tissue mineral analysis from a federally licensed laboratory called Trace Elements, Inc.

Each hair analysis contains a detailed 10-15 page report from the laboratory itself, which shows bar graph readings indicating high, low and reference range levels for toxic metals, essential minerals and significant mineral ratios.

Unlike some labs that test hair tissue analysis, Trace Elements, Inc. does not wash the hair at the lab. Washing the hair removes some of the loosely bound minerals and can reduce some mineral readings by 50 percent or more. The hair sample is prepared in their licensed clinical laboratory by using a series of chemical and high temperature digestive procedures. Testing is then performed using highly sophisticated detection equipment and methods to achieve the most accurate and precise results.

The Comprehensive Hair Tissue Analysis report details graph results for 8 toxic heavy metals/elements, 15 nutritional minerals/elements, 15 additional elements, 7 significant mineral ratios, and 9 toxic metal ratios. Once you purchase the hair analysis from us, we send you a hair sample kit with instructions on how to take the hair sample.

Nutritional Elements: Extensively studied, the nutrient elements have been well defined and are considered essential for many biological functions in the human body. They play key roles in such metabolic processes such as muscular activity, endocrine function, reproduction, skeletal integrity, and overall development.

Toxic Elements: The toxic elements or "heavy metals" are well-known for their interference upon normal biochemical function. They are commonly found in the environment and therefore are present to some degree, in all biological systems. However, these metals clearly pose a concern for toxicity when accumulation occurs to excess.

Additional Elements: These elements are considered as possibly essential by the human body. Additional studies are being conducted to better define their requirements.

Significant Ratios: If the synergistic relationship (or ratio) between certain minerals in the body is disturbed, studies show that normal biological functions and metabolic activity can be adversely affected. Even at extremely low concentrations, the synergistic and/or antagonistic relationships between minerals still exist, which can indirectly affect metabolism.

Toxic Ratios: It is important to note that individuals with elevated toxic levels may not always exhibit clinical symptoms associated with those particular toxic minerals. However, research has shown that toxic minerals/metals can also produce an antagonistic effeect on various essential minerals, eventually leading to distrubances in their metabolic utilization.

For a list of FAQ’s about hair analysis, please click here.

For a complete overview of the various sections covered in the Comprehensive Hair Analysis Report, please click here.

To view details of the elements measured and to order the Comprehensive Hair Mineral Analysis, please click here.

Once you purchase the hair analysis from us, we send you a hair sample kit with instructions on how to take the hair sample. You then send the hair sample to the Trace Elements lab, and the lab sends us the detailed report/results, which we then mail to you. (Please note: international customers outside of the United States will be instructed to send the hair sample to us, not directly to the lab).