The Antioxidant Alpha Lipoic Acid Can Smash Insulin Resistance and Autoimmune Disease

Dr Mercola
26/03/2010
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I first became aware of the alpha lipoic regimen by Dr. Burt Berkson in the late 90's. Early on in his career, while an internist, he was given several patients who were expected to die from hepatitis C. His job was more or less to simply baby sit them in the ICU and watch them die.

But Dr. Berkson was a rebel at heart and he simply couldn't do that. Instead he called an associate at the National Institutes of Health and found out how he could treat them. He learned that alpha lipoic acid had some impressive experimental support. Remarkably, although these patients were expected to die within a few weeks, they all completely recovered!

However not all went well for Dr. Berkson. As he made his superiors look foolish, they simply could not tolerate that so rather than embrace his findings, they actively suppressed the results and made his life miserable for showing them up.

This was a pivotal moment in Dr. Berskson's career and caused him to make choices that eventually led to where he is at now. Since then, Dr. Berkson has lectured all over the world on this topic, and published a study on the use of antioxidants for the treatment of hepatitis C.

His first book, The Alpha-Lipoic Acid Breakthrough was published in 1998.

As many of you already know, I am not fond of recommending many supplements, but I do believe that antioxidants make sense for many of us.

Why You Need Antioxidants

Your entire body, including your DNA, is under endless, daily assault from a variety of sources, from poor diets to pollution. Think of your cells, including your brain cells, each getting hit by free-radicals thousands of times a day. This violent process is called "oxidation," which damages your cells.

Enter antioxidants. They include vitamins and other nutrients that target free radicals.

Food, particularly fruits and vegetables, is a powerful source of these valiant protectors, and your body produces some itself. Their role is to limit the damage to your cells, which can slow down disease and signs of aging.

In the case of alpha lipoic acid, your body does produce it in minute quantities, but most of it comes from your diet. Some of the best natural sources include grass-fed red meat and organ meats.

The Benefits of Alpha Lipoic Acid

Alpha lipoic acid (ALA) has many functions, but it's one of the most effective free radical scavengers, and the only one known to easily get into your brain.

It also has the ability to regenerate other antioxidants such as vitamins C, E, and glutathione. So, when your body has used up these antioxidants, if there's ALA around, it helps regenerate them.

You may not know this, but glutathione is another very important antioxidant. You can get it from supplements, but the only form that works effectively is the reduced form, which is difficult to absorb when taken orally. It is much more cost effective to supplement with precursors, or items like alpha lipoic acid that regenerates glutathione.

Alpha lipoic acid also recycles coenzyme Q10 and NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide).

But, if that wasn't enough, this powerful antioxidant is also:

• A great modifier of gene expression to reduce inflammation


• A very potent heavy metal chelator


• An enhancer of insulin sensitivity

The benefits of ALA can appear near miraculous. For example, according to Dr. Berkson, Russia has successfully used ALA intravenously to reverse ischemia reperfusion injuries by injecting it right after a heart attack or a stroke.

And people with diabetes or metabolic syndrome tend to do much better when taking lipoic acid, as it enhances insulin sensitivity.

There's even been quite a bit of research showing it can restore T cell function. T cells are a type of white blood cells that are of key importance to your immune system, and are at the core of adaptive immunity, the system that tailors your body's immune response to specific pathogens.

What Health Conditions Can be Treated With Alpha Lipoic Acid?

Clinically, alpha lipoic acid seems to be a useful supplement in treating hepatitis C. It can also be used for painful nerve conditions in diabetes, and may help slow down the aging process itself through its reduction in free radicals.

Dr. Berkson uses ALA along with low dose naltrexone (LDN) for the reversal of a number of more serious health conditions such as:

• Lupus


• Rheumatoid arthritis


• Dermatomyositis (an inflammatory muscle disease)


• Autoimmune diseases

Most of his patients normalize in about one month on this combination of ALA and LDN.

What is Low Dose Naltrexone?

Naltrexone (generic name) is a pharmacologically active opioid antagonist, conventionally used to treat drug and alcohol addiction - normally at doses of 50mg to 300mg. As such, it's been an FDA approved drug for over two decades.

However, researchers have found that at very low dosages (3 to 4.5 mg), naltrexone has immunomodulating properties that may be able to successfully treat cancer malignancies and a wide range of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson's, fibromyalgia, and Crohn's disease, just to name a few.

As explained on the informative website lowdosenaltrexone.org, when you take LDN at bedtime - which blocks your opioid receptors for a few hours in the middle of the night - it is believed to up-regulate vital elements of your immune system by increasing your body's production of metenkephalin and endorphins (your natural opioids), hence improving immune function.

Can Alpha Lipoic Acid Help Your Workout?

Alpha lipoic acid can be a potent aid when you exercise vigorously.

In my interview, Dr. Berkson gives an anecdotal story about a friend - an international weight lifting champion - who regularly uses ALA prior to meets.

Unfortunately, there are no set guidelines on dosage and timing. It can be highly individual, and is something that requires a little bit of trial and error in order to get it just right.

But if you suffer from any of the conditions listed above or diabetes it would certainly seem like a useful supplement to consider.

Linda Elsegood and her story of battling MS with LDN

A new theory on MS (angioplasty procedure)

Lauran Neergaard
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Under intense pressure from patients, some U.S. doctors are cautiously testing a provocative theory that abnormal blood drainage from the brain may play a role in multiple sclerosis — and that a surgical vein fix might help.

If it pans out, the approach suggested by a researcher in Italy could mark a vast change for MS, a disabling neurological disease long blamed on an immune system gone awry. But many patients frustrated by today's limited therapies say they don't have time to await the carefully controlled studies needed to prove if it really works and are searching out vein-opening treatment now — undeterred by one report of a dangerous complication.

"This made sense and I was hell-bent on doing it," says Nicole Kane Gurland , the first to receive the experimental treatment at Washington's Georgetown University Hospital, which is set to closely track how a small number of patients fare before and after using a balloon to widen blocked veins.

In Buffalo, N.Y., more than 1,000 people applied for 30 slots in a soon-to-start study of that same angioplasty procedure. When the University at Buffalo team started a larger study a few months ago just to compare whether bad veins are more common in MS patients than in healthy people — not to treat them — more than 13,000 patients applied.

The demand worries Georgetown neurologist Dr. Carlo Tornatore, who teamed with vascular surgeon Dr. Richard Neville in hopes of getting some evidence to guide his own patients' care.

"A lot of people are starting to go to fly-by-night places," says Tornatore. Doing this research takes time, he said. "It's a marathon, not a 100-yard (90-meter) sprint. We have to be very careful."

Multiple sclerosis occurs when the protective insulation, called myelin, that coats nerve fibers gradually is destroyed and scar tissue builds up, short-circuiting messages from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body — impairing walking and causing fatigue and vision, speech, memory and other problems. It affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

A condition with an unwieldy name has become the hottest topic of debate in MS: Chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI. An Italian vascular specialist, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, was hunting ways to help his wife's MS when he discovered that veins carrying oxygen-depleted blood down the neck or spinal cord were narrowed, blocked or twisted in a group of patients. Zamboni reported that made blood back up in a way that might be linked to MS' damage, by causing tiny leaks of immune cells into the brain that start a cascade of inflammatory problems.

Then came the step that spread excitedly through MS patient Internet forums: In a pilot study, Zamboni's team used balloon angioplasty — similar to a longtime method for unclogging heart arteries — to widen affected veins in 65 patients. He reported varying degrees of improvement, mostly in patients with the relapsing-remitting form of MS who experienced fewer flare-ups of symptoms over the next 18 months and some improvements in quality of life.

But nearly half had their veins relapse, and Zamboni urged a larger, more scientifically controlled study be done.

Next, Buffalo researchers scanned the veins of 500 people. About 55 percent of MS patients had signs of CCSVI, compared with 22 percent of healthy people, says lead researcher Dr. Robert Zivadinov, who will present his data next month at a major neurology meeting.

Meanwhile, a Stanford University surgeon tried implanting scaffolding-like stents — also developed for heart disease — into some MS patients' narrowed veins. Dr. Michael Dake halted the work in December after 35 people were treated, saying in an e-mail to colleagues that he decided "after deep soul-searching" not to continue outside of a clinical trial. Stanford won't discuss details, but the journal Annals of Neurology reported that one patient's stent dislodged and flowed to the heart, requiring emergency open-heart surgery to remove it. (An earlier death was reported by family members to be from a stroke unrelated to the MS treatment.)

The MS Society soon will announce funding for additional studies.

Like many neurologists, Georgetown's Tornatore watched the developments with a mixture of skepticism and curiosity. After all, decades ago some doctors first suggested circulation might play a role. The scars tend to cluster near veins, and blood-thinning treatment was tried before immune-targeting drugs were proven to help many MS patients.

He ticks off the possibilities: This could be a blind alley, like so many to befall MS over the years. Or it could work a little. Or it might be revolutionary.

"I have no idea. I'm not predisposed to any of them," Tornatore says.

But he and Neville decided angioplasty was the least risky option for a limited test. In 30 patients who've undergone a $400 ultrasound exam so far, about half have evidence of the vein abnormality.

Gurland was the first treated earlier this month, her jugular veins blocked so tightly that Neville had a hard time even pushing the tiny angioplasty wire inside. But right after the treatment, Gurland's feet that for years had been cold and purplish became warmer and normally colored.

What about MS' hallmark fatigue and weakness, and her scarred nerve cells? While Gurland thinks her balance in the morning, often her worst time, is improving a bit, it's too soon to know; those tests are yet to come.

But last week, her close friend Heather Puck, 61, came in for a vein check, too — calling it the first MS test she ever hoped to pass.

Study explores link between sunlight, multiple sclerosis

Hector DeLuca
University of Wisconsin-Madison
23 Mar 2010

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Madison - For more than 30 years, scientists have known that multiple sclerosis (MS) is much more common in higher latitudes than in the tropics. Because sunlight is more abundant near the equator, many researchers have wondered if the high levels of vitamin D engendered by sunlight could explain this unusual pattern of prevalence.

Vitamin D may reduce the symptoms of MS, says Hector DeLuca, Steenbock Research Professor of Biochemistry at University of Wisconsin-Madison, but in a study published in PNAS this week, he and first author Bryan Becklund suggest that the ultraviolet portion of sunlight may play a bigger role than vitamin D in controlling MS.

Multiple sclerosis is a painful neurological disease caused by a deterioration in the nerve's electrical conduction; an estimated 400,000 people have the disabling condition in the United States. In recent years, it's become clear the patients' immune systems are destroying the electrical insulation on the nerve fibers.

The ultraviolet (UV) portion of sunlight stimulates the body to produce vitamin D, and both vitamin D and UV can regulate the immune system and perhaps slow MS. But does the immune regulation result directly from the UV, indirectly from the creation of vitamin D, or both?

The study was designed to distinguish the role of vitamin D and UV light in explaining the high rate of MS away from the equator, says DeLuca, a world authority on vitamin D.

"Since the 1970s, a lot of people have believed that sunlight worked through vitamin D to reduce MS," says DeLuca. "It's true that large doses of the active form of vitamin D can block the disease in the animal model. That causes an unacceptably high level of calcium in the blood, but we know that people at the equator don't have this high blood calcium, even though they have a low incidence of MS. So it seems that something other than vitamin D could explain this geographic relationship."

Using mice that are genetically susceptible to MS-like disease, the researchers triggered the disease by injecting a protein from nerve fibers. The researchers then exposed the mice to moderate levels of UV radiation for a week. After they initiated disease by injecting the protein, they irradiated the mice every second or third day.

The UV exposure (equivalent to two hours of direct summer sun) did not change how many mice got the MS-like disease, but it did reduce the symptoms of MS, especially in the animals that were treated with UV every other day, DeLuca says.

The research group also found that although the UV exposure did increase the level of vitamin D, that effect, by itself, could not explain the reduced MS symptoms.

In some situations, radiation does reduce immune reactions, but it's not clear what role that might play in the current study. "We are looking to identify what compounds are produced in the skin that might play a role, but we honestly don't know what is going on," DeLuca says. "Somehow it makes the animal either tolerate what's going on, or have some reactive mechanism that blocks the autoimmune damage."

MS is a progressive neurological disease with few effective treatments, but DeLuca stresses that the study, however hopeful, may or may not lead to a new mode of treatment. "There are several ways this could go. If we can find out what the UV is producing, maybe we could give that as a medicine. In the short term, if we can define a specific wavelength of light that is active, and it does not overlap with the wavelengths that cause cancer, we could expose patients who have been diagnosed with MS to that wavelength."

Does this information change the common prescription to avoid excessive sun exposure? "If you have an early bout with MS, then you have to think about your options," says DeLuca. "Remember, this is just experimental work at this stage. Whether it can be translated into practical applications on MS remains to be seen."