Benefit for Vancouver 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 focuses on the benefits of their leaves to slow disc degeneration and even possibly encourage regeneration. That’s news to your Vancouver chiropractor’s ear…and surely to our Vancouver 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 a thought about how to reduce the speed of the degenerative process and/or encourage regeneration. The intervertebral disc is made up of an inner core (nucleus pulposus) made of proteoglycans and a layered outer rim (annulus fibrosus) rich in collagen. Together, these two work as a shock absorber and stabilizer for the spine. Treatment choices for the degenerated disc come from understanding the processes that precede degeneration so as to help relieve discogenic pain more effectively. (1) Your chiropractor studies these mechanisms all the time!
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 many factors, one being the extraction procedure. Functional foods are advanced from carotenoids which are said to add significantly to the multiple health benefits of the foods. (2) Nutrition can plan a role in disc health. Let’s put our Vancouver pumpkins and their by-products to work for us!
PUMPKIN LEAVES AND COLLAGEN AND PROTEINS AND DISC CELLS
One way to put pumpkins to work for us is described in a recent study about how the leaves of pumpkins may help. The acetone extract from Violina pumpkin (curcurbita moshata) leaves brought about a significant rise 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 removed from degenerated disc tissues of spinal surgery patients. Markers indicating the presence and activity of stem cells were significantly higher, too. This news motivated the researchers to state that the hypothesis about how enough stimuli can support resident cells to repopulate the degenerated discs was thus reinforced. The report overall concluded that data point to 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) Vancouver Disc Centers bets you’ll look at the pumpkin leaves differently this season!
CONTACT Vancouver Disc Centers
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates how nutrition may decelerate and possibly stop degeneration and stimulate regeneration via ingredients like chondroitin sulfate based on years of research performed already and how nutrition in combination with The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management decrease and control spine pain. We’ll keep watching the pumpkin leaves’ research as it grows!
Make your Vancouver chiropractic appointment soon to see us this pumpkin season!
