CALMING DOWN THE INFLAMED BRAIN
A lot of people’s brains are inflamed to one degree or another. One of the manifestations of this is ‘brain fog,’ the number one symptom in Functional Medicine! There is, however, a particularly severe condition where the brain becomes inflamed and under attack from its own immune system. This is known as PANS/PANDAS which stands for Paediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. The ‘paediatric’ part is a bit of a misnomer as this condition can happen at any age!
PANS/PANDAS
PANS/PANDAS refers to what happens when someone gets an infection which then tricks the immune system into attacking a small area of its own brain tissues known as the basal ganglia. In other words, the immune system thinks it is attacking the infection but mistakes its own tissues for the invader. A range of infections can trigger this misguided immune response, including the herpes virus family, the Coxsackieviruses, strep throat, Lyme and even Candida yeast infections. The lab test that shows if the brain is under ‘friendly fire’ is the Cunningham Panel from Moleculera Labs in the U.S., which I offer at the Good Health Clinic. If you want to learn more about this test, please go to www.aonm.org and look for PANS/PANDAS and Cunningham Panel.
The brain under ‘friendly fire’ is an inflamed brain that can produce a host of distressing symptoms that can be misdiagnosed as being purely psychiatric in origin.
Symptoms can include:
Severely intrusive thoughts
Obsessional behaviours/ personality changes
Increased stress response/ anxiety
Learning regression/loss of concentration
Motor abnormalities/tics etc.
Inability to carry on normally in life
This is very distressing to patients and their families. Imagine the stress you would feel if you were an eight year old child and your brain was under attack! The charity PANS PANDAS UK sums up the situation very well in their educational leaflets:
“The family and child are often traumatised, frightened and the sense of urgency is palpable”.
The problem for the PANS/PANDAS literate practitioner is how do you calm down the immune system from targeting brain tissues but at the same time help it get on top of the infections which triggered the attack in the first place?A solution lies in understanding the basic roadmap of the immune system to be able to shift the patient’s biology so that a good outcome may be possible.
The Immune Solution
The job of the immune system is to defend the body from invaders. There are different parts of the immune system that do different jobs. It helps that some parts of the immune system go up when others go down, rather like a see-saw. The parts of the immune system most relevant to PANS/PANDAS are known as Th1, Th2 and Th17 cells.
Infection, stress and inflammation make the Th1 helper cells go down. This makes the Th2 helper cells go up. An excess TH2 response produces more allergy, sensitivity, stress and inflammation. This increases Th17 cells which help trigger the immune system to attack its own tissues. A reduced TH1 response produces more vulnerability to infections, including those in hollow body spaces like the sinuses and gut, and gut bacterial imbalance. This produces more inflammation which drives up Th2 and Th17 in a self-perpetuating loop.
Therefore, the first thing to do in such a case is to balance this Th1/Th2 polarity to quieten things down. The tools we have to do this are specific natural products given in the right order and dosages. Once this is in place, you can then proceed to addressing infections present, plus the typical laundry list of other problems that people will have in this condition.
If you feel that you may be suffering from an inflamed brain and would like some help, please contact the Good Health Clinic via our site or directly email - goodhealthclinic@outlook.com.