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The prolific American-Japanese engineer, surgeon, scientist and acupuncturist Yoshiaki Omura is a proponent of what he calls "selective drug uptake enhancement" using acupuncture techniques. The idea of "drug uptake enhancement" acknowledges the fact that the very organs that need drug therapy generally have impaired circulation; i.e. the drugs given to treat an organ or tissue can't get there. Just as an abscess "walls off" infection to protect the organism as a whole, so also does the autonomic nervous system reduce blood flow to organs or tissues to limit the spread of damage. The idea of improving circulation to a dysfunctional organ or tissue is an underlying goal of neural therapy. The same could be said of osteopathy and a number of other non-mainstream medical approaches. Drugs are not usually part of the treatment plan, but there is no reason that they could not be used under some circumstances. However there are circumstances in which improving circulation through an organ or tissue is not in the patient's best interest. This occurs when an organ is carrying a toxic load which (when released) is more than the patient's excretory ability can handle. The stereotypical example is the bone and soft tissues of the face in the patient who has (or has had) dental amalgam fillings. Dental literature dating back to the 1950's documents the amalgam‐periodontal disease connection. Not only does mercury accumulate in the kidneys, liver, pancreas, etc, but also in the nearby tissues of the oral mucosa, periodontal connective tissue and alveolar bone of the jaw and maxilla. The neural therapist needs to be aware of this when doing neural therapy in the mouth and facial sinus regions. Neural therapy by its very nature opens up circulation and mobilizes mercury from these tissues. This may be therapeutic for the target tissues, but also can shift the toxic burden to the excretory organs, especially the kidneys and liver. If after performing a sphenopalatine ganglion injection, the patient begins to experience fatigue, malaise, headache, etc. one should look for interference fields in the kidneys or liver. There may well have been a shift of mercury from the tissues of the face to one of these excretory organs. Neural therapy of the affected organ can provide immediate relief. An illustrative case: A 52 year old woman presented with chronic fatigue, headaches and mild depression of a few years' duration. She was diagnosed with chronic mercury poisoning from her amalgam fillings and was treated over a period of several months with nutritional support, amalgam filling replacement and intravenous DMPS chelation. Urinary excretion of mercury was monitored after every third DMPS chelation treatment. As the mercury excretion decreased to almost zero, so also did her energy and other symptoms improve to the point that treatment was concluded. A few months later she returned with a sudden relapse of her symptoms. This occurred soon after elective oral surgery. A repeat DMPS challenge yielded a urinary excretion of over 70 micrograms of mercury per gram of creatinine ‐ a very high level in any patient with chronic mercury poisoning. Although this sudden increase in mercury excretion could not be blamed on neural therapy per se, the best explanation for the relapse is that mercury was mobilized from the periodontal tissues by the surgery, by the local anaesthetic injections or by a combination of both. In either case, the mercury must have come from the peri-oral tissues. This is of course not a reason to avoid neural therapy in the face and dental regions. It is simply a precautionary tale so that the physician can identify and treat this occasional complication of neural therapy. Letter: Dr. Kidd: In response to your request for MRI related pathology ‐ I may have seen a case of a therapeutic MRI: I had a patient ‐ female, mid 40's ‐ who I was seeing for mixed‐type Migraine cephalgia. Her history was that the headaches started after she was shocked by a high voltage line at work. She also had several severe accidents/traumas in her past and has a hyper‐alert type personality, and always resembled a wild animal ready to bolt out the door at any moment. As part of the routine head pain work‐up, we scheduled her for an MRI brain without contrast. A few weeks later, she returned to the office to go over the results, wherein she sheepishly asked if she could have another MRI. Puzzled, I inquired why, and it took her some time and reassurance that I wouldn't think her crazy, to tell me that: During the MRI, at three distinct points, she felt like a 'hot knife' cut through her head ‐ she even pointed to the locations on her head and the direction of the 'knife' ‐ the pain was described as almost unbearably intense, but only lasted a few seconds each. However, for about ten days after that, she had absolutely no headache, and felt great! (very unlike her). Slowly though, the headaches returned, and have been the same since. This case has always intrigued me, in that her initial injury was the electric shock, and a strong magnetic field seemed to provide temporary relief. ...so maybe not every effect from MRI's are negative I thought you might be interested‐ Theodore Jordan, DO Columbus, OH Editor's comment: Dr. Jordan tells me that he saw this patient a number of years ago and that he does not have contact with her now. I wonder if there might not have been an interference field involved, and if there might have been some therapeutic possibility using neural therapy. Sincerely, Robert F. Kidd, MD, CM |