Poly-herbal formulas as a shot-gun approach to healing I've personally seen single herbs don't often have enough of a spectrum in therapeutic effects to adequately tackle a severe illness and starting to feel like a better response can sometimes be had by using a diverse range at once to tackle multiple factors such as neurotrophic activity and nerve growth, neurotransmitter functioning, and background factors that might hinder repair like neuroinflammation and oxidative stress. Why a poly-herbal approach? Using a poly-herbal approach to target the multifactorial etiology of CNS conditions? How feasible is neurorecovery via augmenting neurotrophic factors and implementing broad-spectrum polyherbal additions for healing the brain into the diet after a significant time period of severe illness? "Injury to the central nervous system (CNS) has a devastating and lifelong impact on the [person's] life. This is because neural function does not completely recover in most cases" 1 Aspects of a CNS injury Neurotrophins are promising therapeutic agents for neural regeneration in the damaged CNS and have shown great promise in modulating the injured brain and promoting functional recovery 2 "Neurotrophins such as BDNF and NGF, by binding to their respective receptors, promote neuronal survival, proliferation, and regeneration, as well as regulate synaptic connectivity and neural network reconstruction. These effects contribute to the restoration of impaired neurological functions, including memory, learning, motor control, and cognitive abilities, providing crucial support for rehabilitation" 3 - A key question is to what extent stimulating endogenous neurotrophins can stimulate neurorepair to the injured CNS? - while early recovery may be more feasible, the number of cell deaths and inflammatory reactions may disrupt the local microenvironment, leading to insufficient secretion of neurotrophins, reducing the survival rate of endogenous neural stem cells, and impeding their damage repair function - there is often a 'glial scar' accompanied by inflammation - what neurotrophic factors would support healing? "more than one trophic factor may be needed for optimal growth stimulation" - serum concentrations of BDNF, NGF, and GDNF were significantly reduced in cognitively impaired subjects References: Ashish Kumar, Arpita Konar, Sukant Garg, Sunil C. Kaul, Renu Wadhwa, Experimental evidence and mechanism of action of some popular neuro-nutraceutical herbs, Neurochemistry International, Volume 149, 2021, doi:10.1016/j.neuint.2021.105124. Olson, L. (1997). Regeneration in the adult central nervous system: Experimental repair strategies. Nature Medicine, 3(12), 1329–1335. doi:10.1038/nm1297-1329 Horner PJ, Gage FH. Regenerating the damaged central nervous system. Nature. 2000 Oct 26;407(6807):963-70. doi: 10.1038/35039559. PMID: 11069169. Varon, S., Manthorpe, M., & Williams, L. R. (1983). Neuronotrophic and Neurite-Promoting Factors and Their Clinical Potentials pp. 73–86. Developmental Neuroscience, 6(2), 73–86. doi:10.1159/000112334 Alfonsetti M, d'Angelo M, Castelli V. Neurotrophic factor-based pharmacological approaches in neurological disorders. Neural Regen Res. 2023 Jun;18(6):1220-1228. doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.358619. 4