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In this weeks episode of Power Health Talk Dr. Martin Rutherford and Dr. Randall Gates discuss migraines, their many potential causes, and natural remedies they have found to work.
Related hyperlink -- http://powerhealthreno.com/migraines-and-chronic-headaches
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Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) is surprisingly common. The prevalence of occurrence is approximately 10 percent of the “adult” population. The diagnosis is often vague, but essentially RLS is:
Characterized by an irresistible urge to move the legs, particularly at night when lying or sitting down. May be accompanied by symptoms of “skin crawling,” tingling, or a sense of pressure in their calf muscles. Symptom relief when moving around Waking up in the middle of the night with these symptoms again.
If symptoms occur more than twice a week, and result in severe disruption of sleep patterns and marked daytime symptoms, the case is severe and requires immediate investigation and intervention.
The causes of RLS are varied. Often, the “cause” is a combination of two or more of the following components:
Genetic, especially if appearing before the age of 30. Secondary variations that are reversible (pregnancy, kidney failure, and anemia’s). Associated conditions that exacerbate RLS and must be treated to resolve the condition (spinal cord compression, peripheral neuropathy, iron and B-12 anemia’s, kidney failure, iron deficiencies).
There are many lifestyle factors that make RLS worse. Central nervous system stimulants and depressants must be evaluated in a thorough history, and be reduced or eliminated for maximum recovery.
The mechanism of RLS is primarily dysfunction of a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. It controls neurological output from the brain and allows our central nervous system to be calm relative to body movements. When the basal ganglion is not functioning properly, excessive movement while at rest occurs in the body. A very well known and severe manifestation of poor basal ganglia function is Parkinson’s disease. RLS is a less severe manifestation of the same brain dysfunction.
The medical approach is to treat with dopamine medications, to calm down the basal ganglia and benzodiazepines to keep the patient asleep. The approach is typically successful, but the side effects of long term use of these medications can often create psychiatric side effects, and can damage internal organs.
There are other approaches. Functional medicine treats the body as a whole and evaluates all components–musculoskeletal, neurological (i.e. basal ganglia), and metabolic (i.e. anemia’s, iron deficiencies, diabetes, etc)–that contribute to destabilizing the basal ganglia itself, and thus allowing the excess movements to occur. Neurologically, other parts of the brain (cerebellum and frontal lobes) “fire” on the basal ganglia and cause it to work properly. If they are not functioning correctly, they need to be, and can be, “strengthened” through specific brain exercises. As they strengthen and function better, the basal ganglia calms down and can recover; so does the RLS.
The brain needs proper nutrients to function well. Those patients are evaluated metabolically for indicated nutritional and dietary changes, or herbal/botanical support that will allow the frontal and cerebella lobes to function better, and do their job in correcting the basal ganglia and subsequently the RLS. The advantage of the functional model: no medications, no long term side effects, and an individualized operating manual for that patient to follow, to control the condition permanently.
Restless Leg Syndrome Treatment
Relevant weblink http://powerhealthreno.com/restless-leg-syndrome
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In this episode Dr. Martin Rutherford and Dr. Randall Gates discuss gluten intolerance, some of the odd items gluten is found in, as well as some of the symptoms people may suffer from if they are gluten intolerant. They will also be discussing gluten intolerance vs celiac disease and some of the new research that has come out that may help us to understand why gluten has become such a big problem lately.
You might also be interested in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten_sensitivity
Vertigo, or dizziness, affects millions of people around the world each year. In a majority of the cases, vertigo is nothing than a temporary inconvenience. In some cases, vertigo is a debilitating condition. Day-to-day activities is kept to a minimum due to the severe dizziness.
In many cases, the area of dysfunction in the nervous system is the cerebellum. The cerebellum is in the posterior aspect (back part) of the brain and controls our coordinated movements.
There are specific neurological tests that we utilize to determine cerebellar function. Standing with your feet together and eyes closed, the test is positive if the patient sways back and forth. Other tests include, touching the index finger to the nose with the eyes closed, walking heel to toe, moving the fingers rapidly as if playing the piano, or touching all of your fingers to your thumb as fast as possible. These tests and others are used to determine the function of the cerebellum.
Treatment of the cerebellar dysfunction may include:
Unilateral (one-sided) Adjustments: Extremities (arms and legs), lumbar (low back) and cervical (neck) spine will be manipulated on one side only to fire muscle spindle cells (muscle receptors) and joint mechanoreceptors (joint receptors) into the same cerebellum and opposite cerebra cortex (brain). The thoracic (mid-back) spine will be globally manipulated to fire the dorsal columns (back part of the spinal cord) and reduce rib fixations.
Caloric: A warm water caloric of 180 milliliters may be administered in the ear to stimulate the ipsilateral (same side) cerebellum.
Eye Exercises: Eye exercises may be used to increase the frequency of firing to the cerebellum and frontal lobe of the brain.
Heat Therapy: Heat therapy is used to promote an increased metabolic and healing rate to the involved tissue. Increased heat helps increase activation to the brain. Heat has immediate soothing and palliative effects as decreased joint stiffness, decreased muscle spasms and releases histamine and bradykinin causing vasodilation of the tissues.
One or all of the procedures may be employed to restore the cerebellum to its normal function.
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Dr. Randall Gates discusses natural weight loss tips and why some people have a harder time than others losing weight.
Have you tried everything to lose weight with little to no results? Are you tired of hearing how it is just calories in calories out that you need to work on? Perhaps it is time to find out what is truly preventing you from losing weight.
As stated in the video above there are many reasons that people can not lose weight no matter what they try or what “diet” they go on. The problem with most diets is that they are short term and in many cases un-healthy for you if you were to do them over a long period of time.
The Power Health Functional Weight Loss program looks at you from an entirely different perspective. We look at your individual body and condition and do our research to find out what could be preventing you from losing weight. Once we are able to find those issues and work on them you will be amazed at how quickly you are able to lose weight.
Added reading: http://powerhealthreno.com/services-2/functional-weight-loss
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Dr. Martin Rutherford and Dr. Randall Gates discuss Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, it's symptoms, possible causes, and treatment options.
Most people who suffer from small fiber neuropathy pain don’t have any idea what their full spectrum of treatment options are. Most believe that (a) they have to take medications that give some relief and have side effects or just don’t work or (b) that there isn’t anything else they can do. To start let’s get a big myth out-of-the-way – “only diabetics or multiple sclerosis sufferers get neuropathy”. There is a myriad of different causes of small fiber neuropathy.
Peripheral neuropathy is a problem with the nerves that carry information to and from the brain to the legs and feet. This produces pain, loss of feeling, and inability to control muscles. But already there’s a problem with this definition — just because you feel a symptom in your hands or feet doesn’t mean that’s where the problem is. This is a huge, gigantic misunderstanding and this is where diagnoses and treatment of most peripheral neuropathy goes wrong because peripheral neuropathy is in fact a complex web of neurological, hormonal, immune, and/or nutritional problems.
So with so many potential causes or combinations of causes of peripheral neuropathy it’s important that peripheral neuropathy sufferers explore them all as “one size diagnoses and treatment” does not fit them.
One of the potential causes of peripheral neuropathy is a “functional disconnection syndrome” affecting the parietal lobe of the brain. The right parietal lobe of the brain receives and processes all the signals that come from the nerves in your muscles and joints on both sides of your body. When the right parietal lobe is functioning properly you have normal sensation — no numbness, no tingling, no shooting pains. But if the parietal lobe starts to weaken or slow down then the signals don’t get processed correctly and you feel numbness, tingling and pain in both of your feet, and then months or years later in your hands. This is what happens when the functional disconnection syndrome occurs in the brain. Functional disconnection syndrome is an electrical imbalance in the frequency of firing between the two sides of the brain. The two parietal lobes should fire equally. When one starts to fire less frequently than the other (due to traumas, emotional stresses, inflammatory or toxic triggers) then neurons in the parietal lobe lose their firing “timing” and we get all sorts of symptoms like numbness, tingling, weakness, pins and needles, and pain — the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy.
Another major trigger of this condition is an autoimmune response against peripheral nerve tissue. Basically what happens is your immune system attacks and destroys nerve tissue. It can even attack brain tissue itself. These attacks can be triggered by food sensitivities, viruses, infections, high amounts of insulin (diabetics) and high amounts of inflammation. The immune system mistakenly destroys nerve tissue and causes all of the symptoms of peripheral neuropathy whether attacking brain or peripheral nerve tissue.
So to properly assess and treat peripheral neuropathy each system of the body must be reviewed and evaluated. Triggers must be eliminated and problems and imbalances in the hormonal, G.I. and immune systems must be corrected, also the various imbalances unique to the individual need to be addressed with a coordinated, non-drug approach all at the same time. If this is not done the sufferer often will spend months and years going from practitioner to practitioner evaluating the various above-mentioned “pieces of the puzzle” one at a time. Although the patient may occasionally “luck out” by accidentally addressing the correct cause this dis-organized approach to a problem as complex as peripheral neuropathy is usually doomed to fail and is the reason why medications and surgery yield poor long-term results when utilized as treatment options for the peripheral neuropathy patient.
Associated link http://powerhealthreno.com/peripheral-neuropathy
