Benefit for Vancouver Degenerated Discs from Pumpkin Leaves

This time of year, pumpkins are all over the place! We like them for décor, but they offer so much more! Recent news highlights the benefits of their leaves to reduce the speed of 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 relieving the pain and returning function without consideringa way to slow 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 options for the degenerated disc come from understanding the processes that precede degeneration so as to help ease 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 foremost one in most pumpkin types. The total content of carotenoids rests on many factors, one is the extraction process. Functional foods are developed 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 should not just be thrown away!

PUMPKIN LEAVES AND COLLAGEN AND PROTEINS AND DISC CELLS

A unique 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 generated 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 taken from degenerated disc tissues of spinal surgery patients. Markers noting 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 thereby sustained. The report overall determined that data point to the breakthrough that molecules 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 will 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 describes 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!

Schedule your Vancouver chiropractic appointment soon to visit us this pumpkin season!