Benefit for Fort Wayne 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 reduce the speed of disc degeneration and even possibly encourage regeneration. That’s news to your Fort Wayne chiropractor’s ear…and without doubt to our Fort Wayne back pain and neck pain patients’ ears, too!

THE DISC – Healthy and Degenerated

Many back pain treatment approaches focus on relieving the pain and returning function without a thought about how to slow 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 work 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 relieve discogenic pain more effectively. (1) Your chiropractor probes 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 foremost one in most pumpkin varieties. The total content of carotenoids depends on many factors, one being the extraction procedure. Functional foods are advanced from carotenoids which are said to add significantly to the numerous 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

A unique way to put pumpkins to work for us is well explained in a recent study regarding how the leaves of pumpkins may help. The acetone extract from Violina pumpkin (curcurbita moshata) leaves provoked 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 increased, too. This news excited the researchers to declare that the hypothesis about how enough stimuli can support resident cells to repopulate the degenerated discs was thus reinforced. The report overall determined that data indicate that the discovery of molecules that may effectively slow disc degeneration using a part of the pumpkin that most of us get rid of as waste – the leaves! (3) Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc thinks you will look at the pumpkin leaves differently this season!

CONTACT Cox Chiropractic Medicine Inc

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 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 Fort Wayne chiropractic appointment today to visit us this pumpkin season!