Benefit for Montreal Degenerated Discs from Pumpkin Leaves
This time of year, pumpkins are all over the place! We enjoy them for décor, but they offer so much more! Recent news highlights the benefits of their leaves to slow disc degeneration and even possibly encourage regeneration. That is news to your Montreal chiropractor’s ear…and surely to our Montreal back pain and neck pain patients’ ears, too!
THE DISC – Healthy and Degenerated
Many back pain treatment approaches focus on easing the pain and returning function without addressinga means to reduce the speed of the degenerative process and/or encourage regeneration. The intervertebral disc has an inner core (nucleus pulposus) made of proteoglycans and a layered outer rim (annulus fibrosus) rich in collagen. Combined, these two act as a shock absorber and stabilizer for the spine. Treatment options for the degenerated disc come from understanding the processes that precede degeneration so as to help alleviate discogenic pain more effectively. (1) Your chiropractor expores these mechanisms a lot!
PUMPKIN LEAVES AND CAROTENOIDS
It's recognized that pumpkin products and by-products (like leaves!) have major carotenoids - β-carotene, α-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin – with β-carotene being the main one in most pumpkin types. The total content of carotenoids rests on several factors, one is the extraction procedure. Functional foods are developed from carotenoids which are said to add significantly to the many health benefits of the foods. (2) Nutrition can plan a role in disc health. Pumpkin and its by-products shouldn’t just be thrown away!
PUMPKIN LEAVES AND COLLAGEN AND PROTEINS AND DISC CELLS
One way to put pumpkins to work for us is well explained in a recent study about how the leaves of pumpkins may help. The acetone extract from Violina pumpkin (curcurbita moshata) leaves generated a significant increase in extracellular matrix components like aggrecan and collagen type II in addition to other proteins and stress response regulators in the degenerated intervertebral disc cells taken from degenerated disc tissues of spinal surgery patients. Markers indicating the presence and activity of stem cells were significantly higher as well. This news motivated the researchers to declare that the hypothesis about how adequate stimuli can support resident cells to repopulate the degenerated discs was thus reinforced. The report overall concluded that data indicate that the discovery of molecules that may effectively slow disc degeneration using a part of the pumpkin that most of us throw away as waste – the leaves! (3) Dr. Hoang's Chiropractic Clinic thinks you’ll look at the pumpkin leaves differently this season!
CONTACT Dr. Hoang's Chiropractic Clinic
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates how nutrition may slow and possibly avert degeneration and stimulate regeneration via ingredients like chondroitin sulfate based on years of research performed already and how nutrition combined with The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management decrease and manage spine pain. We’ll keep watching the pumpkin leaves’ research as it grows!
Make your Montreal chiropractic appointment soon to visit us this pumpkin season!
