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Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

bbc.co.uk

51–60 of 139 posts

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#51
post #8

What do we know so far? - Gut Bacteria are involved - Inflammation is involved - The brain works on glucose - The brain can also work on Ketones - Cinnamon seems to help in mice trials (and also has anti-inflammatory properties). - Could diabetes be analogous to Parkinson's? Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many); could Parkinsons be caused by people being very dopamin…

> Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many)

That's an outrageous misrepresentation of diabetes (all types).

Diabetics process carbs exactly like everyone else. The body breaks them down and throws the sugars into the bloodstream in the perfectly normal way.

The lack of insulin (generally Type 1) or the resistance to insulin present (generally Type 2), means the cells struggle to process the glucose, leading to uncontrolled rise in glucose levels to dangerous levels.

The body has a poor 'over-limit' response to glucose and tries rather inefficiently to dump the excess in urine which has limited success. As a consequence lots of short-term and long-term damage to the body results - some of which is still being discovered.

Causes of diabetes have multiple possible elements, including none, one or more of : genetics, environmental [e.g. infection] and lifestyle.

"eating too many [carbs]" is a myth and intended to be derisive and offensively stereotype diabetics as being wholly responsible for their condition - just dressed up as a more socially acceptable victim-blame than saying they're receiving God's punishment for having sugar in their coffee.

Science has conclusively proven diabetes is not some simple response to over-indulgence in carbohydrate.

Stop making offensive and untrue claims.

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#52

My Dad was recently diagnosed. Very early stage. This is very interesting news. My take is that Parkinson's is a little like cancer in that it likely has multiple root causes that can injure the same part of the brain (substantia niagra) and cause the disease. My research for his case led me to vitamin k2 deficiency as a possible cause / complicating factor. There are some genetic models and mouse trials that show k2…

Would it help to record the tremor intensity while tracing a smoothly moving dot with his finger on a cell phone screen? And/or record the tremor while holding the phone and tracing along a line with a corner of the phone. I bet you could get pretty good at-the-moment measurement of the tremor. Combine that with graphing and a rolling average, and you might have a pretty clear picture.

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#54
post #8

What do we know so far? - Gut Bacteria are involved - Inflammation is involved - The brain works on glucose - The brain can also work on Ketones - Cinnamon seems to help in mice trials (and also has anti-inflammatory properties). - Could diabetes be analogous to Parkinson's? Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many); could Parkinsons be caused by people being very dopamin…

> Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many) That's an outrageous misrepresentation of diabetes ( all types). Diabetics process carbs exactly like everyone else. The body breaks them down and throws the sugars into the bloodstream in the perfectly normal way. The lack of insulin (generally Type 1) or the resistance to insulin present (generally Type 2), means the cells str…

I am curious. Did you really find his claim "offensive"? Or was it simply incorrect and over simplified?

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#55
post #44

Has anyone noticed how quickly a new research direction gets connected to all the big diseases? It has only been a few years since microbiome research really became a thing. It is disconcertingly fad-like. From pubmed: pubmed - human microbiome year count 2017 27 2016 5464 2015 5544 2014 4283 2013 2993 2012 2064 2011 1405 2010 910 2009 679 2008 520 2007 392 2006 290 2005 245 2004 160 2003 135 2002 118 2001 74 2000 78…

I know nothing about microbiome research. However, I don't think "fad-like" is a logical conclusion just because the amount of research is continuing to increase. This just seems more like typical human advancement and dissemination of knowledge. For instance, I'm sure you'd find a similar trend with "computer", "solar energy" and "global warming". Someone discovers something and it takes a while for everyone to catc…

>"I don't think "fad-like" is a logical conclusion just because the amount of research is continuing to increase. This just seems more like typical human advancement and dissemination of knowledge."

I mean that the direction things are going it will eventually be discovered that "everything is correlated with everything else"... in hundreds of years. Why not just assume that to begin with? Take it as a first principle. Instead what we care about is measuring the quantitative relationships (what functional form, etc) between various factors.

Also, I just now looked at the paper. I cannot believe neuroscientists are still getting away with this. There is not a single scatter plot. Let's look at the highlights:

  - Gut microbes promote a-synuclein-mediated motor deficits and brain pathology
  - Depletion of gut bacteria reduces microglia activation
  - SCFAs modulate microglia and enhance PD pathophysiology
  - Human gut microbiota from PD patients induce enhanced motor dysfunction in mice
So I expect to see scatter plots of:

  "# of gut microbes" (or "% pathogenic microbes") vs "motor deficits"
  "a-synuclein levels" vs "motor deficits"

  "# of Gut microbes" (or "% pathogenic microbes") vs "brain pathology"
  "a-synuclein levels" vs "brain pathology"

  "Gut bacteria levels" vs "microglia activation"

  "SCFA levels" vs "microglia activity"
  "SCFA levels" vs "PD pathophysiology"

  "# of human PD microbes" (or "% human PD microbes") vs "motor dysfunction"
You can see the entire project was designed around seeing if there is a correlation, which we should already assume is true. Instead we should be looking at those scatter plots, so we can achieve the useful goal of discerning the relationship between various biological phenomena.

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#56
post #8

What do we know so far? - Gut Bacteria are involved - Inflammation is involved - The brain works on glucose - The brain can also work on Ketones - Cinnamon seems to help in mice trials (and also has anti-inflammatory properties). - Could diabetes be analogous to Parkinson's? Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many); could Parkinsons be caused by people being very dopamin…

> Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many) That's an outrageous misrepresentation of diabetes ( all types). Diabetics process carbs exactly like everyone else. The body breaks them down and throws the sugars into the bloodstream in the perfectly normal way. The lack of insulin (generally Type 1) or the resistance to insulin present (generally Type 2), means the cells str…

I'm sorry for upsetting you but from my research eating high sugar/carb diets (without exercise) causes insulin resistance in the majority of people. There are some groups that are more susceptible to this of course.

I'm not blaming anyone or even thinking about that; I've just done a lot of research and listened to a lot of interesting studies about the gut biome, western diet, insulin resistance, weight training, HIIT, noticing how I feel if I eat lots of sugar and carbs, and trying to eat a more health diet.

Maybe I'll be proved to be wrong, I'm just giving an opinion based on some research I've done.

Also by process I've definitely used the wrong word there. I definitely mean utilise.

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er... you are just assuming by process I mean digest. To be clear: > glucose building up in the bloodstream with no real way to utilize it === Inability to process carbs and sugar. Maybe your description is more accurate.

Using the term "inability to process carbs and sugar" is misleading and totally not the same thing as insulin resistance. Its generally assumed that processing carbs is the act of digestion. You're using the word processed in the wrong situation here. EDIT: Also you can still process carbs, you just can't utilize glucose in the blood as a diabetic.

Okay, so if I replace "process" with "utilise" we are good?

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#58
post #8

What do we know so far? - Gut Bacteria are involved - Inflammation is involved - The brain works on glucose - The brain can also work on Ketones - Cinnamon seems to help in mice trials (and also has anti-inflammatory properties). - Could diabetes be analogous to Parkinson's? Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many); could Parkinsons be caused by people being very dopamin…

> Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many) That's an outrageous misrepresentation of diabetes ( all types). Diabetics process carbs exactly like everyone else. The body breaks them down and throws the sugars into the bloodstream in the perfectly normal way. The lack of insulin (generally Type 1) or the resistance to insulin present (generally Type 2), means the cells str…

So insulin resistance isn't in some way related to chronic elevated levels of insulin?

It's also interesting that insulin resistance is reversible by simply eating less carbs. But clearly, diabetes has nothing to do with carbs :-)

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#59
My friend is a good Ayurvedic doctor. As per Ayurvedic diagnosis and treatment - root cause of most disorders point to improper digestion and accumulation of 'ama' (no English translation although some people say toxins for lack of better word). Practically all Ayurvedic treatments have diet guidelines to be followed with treatment.

I've seen some remarkable healing and recovery in people. But diagnosis and treatment is a specialized skill. Many modern Ayurvedic doctors also use allopathic diagnosis and reports in conjunction with pulse and other Ayurvedic diagnosis.

Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diabetics generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually by eating too many) That's an outrageous misrepresentation of diabetes ( all types). Diabetics process carbs exactly like everyone else. The body breaks them down and throws the sugars into the bloodstream in the perfectly normal way. The lack of insulin (generally Type 1) or the resistance to insulin present (generally Type 2), means the cells str…

So insulin resistance isn't in some way related to chronic elevated levels of insulin? It's also interesting that insulin resistance is reversible by simply eating less carbs. But clearly, diabetes has nothing to do with carbs :-)

I'm off to have a Jam sandwich on some nice white bread.

Edit: I applaud the downvoter of this comment.

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