Benefit for Manchester 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 Manchester chiropractor’s ear…and without doubt to our Manchester back pain and neck pain patients’ ears, too!
THE DISC – Healthy and Degenerated
Most treatments of back pain focus on easing the pain and returning function without consideringa way to reduce the speed of the degenerative process and/or promote 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 work as a shock absorber and stabilizer for the spine. Treatment options for the degenerated disc come from being aware of the processes that lead to degeneration in order to help ease discogenic pain more effectively. (1) Your chiropractor expores 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 varieties. The total content of carotenoids rests on a variety of factors, one being the extraction process. 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. 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 rise in extracellular matrix components like aggrecan and collagen type II as well as other proteins and stress response regulators in the degenerated intervertebral disc cells removed from degenerated disc tissues of spinal surgery patients. Markers noting the presence and activity of stem cells were significantly increased as well. This news excited the researchers to declare that the hypothesis about how adequate stimuli can support resident cells to repopulate the degenerated discs was thereby sustained. The report overall determined that data indicate that the breakthrough that molecules may effectively reduce disc degeneration using a part of the pumpkin that most of us throw away as waste – the leaves! (3) Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries bets you will look at the pumpkin leaves differently this season!
CONTACT Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries
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 stop degeneration and stimulate regeneration via ingredients like chondroitin sulfate based on years of research done already and how nutrition in combination with The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management reduce and control spine pain. We’ll keep watching the pumpkin leaves’ research as it grows!
Make your Manchester chiropractic appointment now to visit us this pumpkin season!
