Zac's Dystonia Story (Remission)

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It might not seem like it, but this is the short version of my remission from Dystonia :-p

For me the answer was Functional Neurology and supplements.  

No mainstream doctors or drugs required, though I did go down that path without success and in fact some of the drugs such as Artane made me a lot worse.

 

I suspected that autoimmune disease was behind my Dystonia and blood tests showed signs of  Strep.  My movement disorder specialist at the time said to ignore the results as he thought this had nothing to do with my Dystonia.  It only took me around a year to realise that treating movement disorders is not an exact science and treatment consists of throwing a load or drugs and/or botox at the patient in the hope that one of them has a positive change.

 

18 months after my Dystonia began, I heard about Functional Neurology and with nothing to loose, I found a practitioner here in Australia.  A Functional Neurologist is a Chiropractor who has studied Neurology.  It's been around for about 35 years and mainstream medico's like to harp on about how there's no evidenced based studies to prove it's effectiveness... blah blah blah.  I found one other Dystonia sufferer who had tried it with positive results, so I thought I'd give it a go.  

When the Functional Neurologist looked at my medical history including all my blood tests, they felt that my Dystonia might be caused by Autoimmune Disease.  The reason being that I had a history of Rhabdomyolysis which is an autoimmune disease and also Periodontal Disease, another autoimmune disease.  So part of the puzzle of the cause of my Dystonia, was autoimmune disease.  Further testing uncovered high Clostridium in my gut. This bacteria effects serotonin uptake in the brain. Seratonin is important for movement. The Streptococcus antibodies in my body were likely attacking my basal ganglia (PANDAS).

All this was found and linked together by Functional Neurologist and my Naturopath.

Further testing when I visited the Carrick Brain Centre in Dallas in July showed signs of oxidative stress and mitochondrial disease.  2 things also found in autistic children and adults.

 

The treatment was Antibiotics to kill off the Strep and Clostridium followed by Probiotics to get the good bacteria back into my gut.

I also take a load of supplements, Fish Oil, Vitamin D, Vitamin B Complex, Coenzyme Q10, Glidosin, Bacopa, Manganese, Royal Jelly, 5-Hydroxy-Tryptophan and L-Tyrosine.

The other part of my treatment was Vestibular rehabilitation to rewire my brain to bypass the damage caused to my brain (Mitochondrial disease and Oxidative stress).  I've being doing the Vestibular exercises, since February this year and I've had good success with it.  The thing that finally tied it all together and lead to major improvement was a change of diet.

I changed my diet to include more vegetables and less processed foods.  To achieve this I turned to smoothies.  Nothing too exciting with the smoothies, just Broccoli, Spinich, Psylium husk and some orange juice.  A few weeks after starting the green smoothies, I noticed significant changes, that snowballed and within a month, I had improved by over 50% and after the second month I had reached 90% improvement.

 

John Hopkins University recently released the results of a 18 week study that supported broccoli sprout extract as an effective treatment for Oxidative stress and mitochondrial disease.  The test subjects we Autism patients, and the results were so positive, that they thought they had done something wrong.  I mention this because, I believe the humble broccoli that I started using in my smoothies, quiet likely was the catalist to the sudden effectivess of my vestibular exercises, and subsequent reduction of my Dystonia symptoms. 

 

I hope this post has be of help to someone.  It's important to realise, that Dystonia is unique to each sufferer, to the treatment will be different for everyone.  If you go down the path of Functional Neurology, be sure to religiously do the prescribed exercises, no matter how odd they may seem.  For example one of my exercises was to listen to Mozart in the right ear twice a day for 10 minutes.  It was all to target the underactive part of my brain and rewire around the damage.