Alim-Louis Benabid From France, Brings Hope To PD Patients

Contact: Audrey Hu Whatsapp/hp: 0086 13880143964 Email: audrey.hu@wecistanche.com

Before Parkinson's disease was officially named, it has appeared in the accounts of many ancient Eurasian civilizations. This mysterious disease gradually deprives patients of the ability to control their bodies. The most obvious symptom is uncontrollable resting tremors.

It was not until 1817 that the British medical scientist James Parkinson formally defined it. In honor of his great contribution, later generations named this chronic and progressive movement disorder "Parkinson's disease".

James Parkinson

(1755-1824)

Since then, humans have been struggling to find a way to fight Parkinson's disease. In the last century, "destroying" surgical therapy was very common. However, this radical approach requires complete removal or ablation of the diseased tissue in the brain, which not only easily causes hemiplegia, but also has a high mortality rate.

In the field of medical therapy, scientists discovered special protein aggregates ("Lewy bodies") in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients in the early 20th century, and in the 1960s found that dopamine levels in certain areas of the brain of patients were lower than those of healthy people, These important findings propelled levodopa into the field of physicians. L-dopa can stimulate the brain to produce dopamine, help patients relieve symptoms, and become the first effective oral drug for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

However, the effectiveness of levodopa still decreases with disease progression, and patients require more comprehensive treatment strategies. The entire medical community is still searching, is there a better way?

Cistanche tubulosa has the effect of anti-Parkinson's disease

Witness the moment of miracle

The long wait turned around in 1987. This fateful person is Alim-Louis Benabid from France, a neurosurgeon, and a physicist. This span of academic background is very rare in the surgical profession, and it is also a good source of his expertise in the field of neurology. Bold pioneering laid the foundation.

At the time, electrical stimulation therapy had been tried for tremor-like disorders but was abandoned with little success. The experimental spirit of the physicist made Benabid reluctant to stop exploring. He later recalled that while operating on a patient, a question suddenly came to his mind, and he "stopped and took a moment. Thinking": If you change the frequency of electrical stimulation, will you get different effects?

French neurosurgeon: Alim-Louis Benabid

Driven by this idea, he inserted electrodes into the patients' thalamus (an area of the brain associated with tremors) and gradually increased the frequency of electrical stimulation from the usual 50 Hz. When he increased the frequency to 100 Hz, humans The most miraculous moment in the history of the fight against Parkinson's disease occurred - the patient's uncontrollable tremors ceased.

"When I increased the frequency of electrical stimulation to 100 Hz, I found that the patient's tremor stopped completely, I asked him if he could move his finger, he did, which means we successfully suppressed the tremor without affecting the patient's movement Ability. At that moment, we realized that we had touched on a new treatment for Parkinson's disease." —Alim-Louis Benabid

what is cistanche

The blessing of technology giants

High-frequency deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy for Parkinson's disease is taking shape at this moment, but its advent has not been smooth sailing. Because the technology was not yet perfect, the DBS therapy at that time lacked sufficient clinical data, and the operation time was as long as 7 hours, which brought great challenges to persuading doctors to accept the new therapy. Benabid was once defeated in the competition for commercial sponsorship when the market prospects were not optimistic.

Fortunately, Medtronic finally saw the value of DBS therapy for patients. At the recommendation of an insider, the Medtronic board watched a video of DBS treating Parkinson's patients. After witnessing the dramatic changes that DBS therapy has brought to patients, the Board of Directors immediately decided to give special approval to provide strong support for the study of DBS.

anti-Parkinson's disease: cistanche herb

Medtronic's important decision culminated in the first generation of the DBS brain pacemaker. With outstanding efficacy, DBS therapy was approved in Europe and FDA in 1998 and 2002. After generations of technological refinement, today's brain pacemakers have greatly improved treatment efficiency and durability, and have become one of the standard treatments for Parkinson's disease.

Thirty years ago, Professor Benabid and Medtronic jointly developed the Deep Brain Stimulation System (DBS), which has benefited 175,000 patients worldwide.

In 2014, the Lasker Prize in Clinical Medicine, a global medical award known as the "Nobel Weathervane", was awarded to Prof. Benabid and Delong for their discovery of the DBS subthalamic nucleus target.

Note： The traditional Chinese medicinal herb cistanche (also known as the "dragon herb" and "desert ginseng"), grows only in arid and warm deserts. As one of the nine immortal herbs, Cistanche (cistanche tubulosa/cistanche deserticola/desertliving cistanche/cistanche salsa)contents with rich effective ingredients such as echinacoside, acteoside, total phenylethanoid glycosides, flavonoids, polysaccharides, etc. these effective ingredients made cistanche a precious nourishing herb and food material for people's immunity, internal organs, and brain cells and neurons, etc. Modern pharmacological studies have confirmed the following effects of cistanche(benefits of cistanche): improve immunity; improve sexual function and kidney function; anti-fatigue; anti-aging; improved memory; anti-Parkinson's disease; anti-Alzheimer's disease; antioxidation; ease-constipation; anti-inflammatory; promote bone growth, whitening skin; protect liver; etc.

cistanche stem