Last year, there was an interesting story about a woman who could smell a certain odour that seemed to be given off by people with Parkinson's (primarily her husband).
Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
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Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never researched too much, mostly watched what happened to M.J.Fox. I thought PD was mostly affecting motor controls on non life critical muscles (limbs). What are the other effects ?
Dementia is common as the disease progresses. Dementia is horrible.
PD is bad enough on its own without dementia. My mother has had the early onset variety since her mid-thirties, and while her cognitive function has clearly declined, she's no where near dementia. On its own, the disease is like prison. You slowly become trapped in your own body and lose the ability to have an impact on the world around you. The treatments and medication cause diskinesia (the violent/uncontrollable tremors associated with the disease) and the wrong dose (for that day/time), or the wrong setting on the implant they put into the motor cortex to stimulate it, is as bad as no treatment at all. Depression is a common co-morbidity.
Parkinsonism is watching yourself die with full knowledge of what's happening to you and a complete inability to do anything about it. My mother had polio as a child as well, so she's trying to learn to walk for the third time.
There is no fate I find more horrifying on a personal level. None.
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#33My 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 as a modality. He had his gallbladder removed about a year before symptoms started. He also has kidney stones. K2 is fat soluble, only acquired through diet, and affects calcium regulation. Oddly connected to his history/symptoms. So hard to help debug stuff like this.
He's on a supplement now. We don't have a great way to measure if it's working. The symptoms have such natural variance day to day.
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#34What 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…
look at CYP2D6 gene polymorphism and it's effect on enzymes and it's existence in many more parts of the body than at first expected, (brain, etc), here's someone smarter than me replying to my stabs in the dark on reddit;
"Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (speed up) reactions and consequently are involved in nearly every physiological process. You make a great point with the microbiota-brain interaction (also known as the gut-brain axis). We're starting to look at things like depression as a function of the gut-brain axis and consequently need to start looking to diet and antibiotics as a function of depression. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/4c0nuz/im_inter...
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#35Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#36Biologist here. Be careful, researchers tend to oversell everything concerning the microbiome.
"Overselling the microbiome awards" are actually a thing: https://phylogenomics.blogspot.fr/p/blog-page.html
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#37What 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…
Could diabetes be analogous to Parkinson's? Diabetics
generally have lost the ability to process carbs (usually
by eating too many);
I'm assuming you are talking about type 2, which has nothing to do with the ability to process carbs but instead resistance to insulin. This is caused by so many different factors like genes, medications, stress, smoking, high intake of certain types of fats, lack of exercise, white rice, pollution, etc.
You can't be talking about type 1 because you'd be absurdly wrong if you were.
Source: parent of type 1 diabetic
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#38From the article: > The bacteria can break down fibre into short-chain fatty acids. This doesn't make any sence. Fibre(fiber) is composed by carbohydrates bounded in a different way of the sugar that is used to sweeten. Perhaps bacteria can eat fibre and produce fatty acids, but fibre is not made of fatty acids. This is probably an error in the press article. Do someone with access to the research paper to understand…
Short chain fatty acids can be things like acetic acid, propionic acid, butyric acid. The fermentation process takes in fiber and puts out these guys, so while fiber isn't an SCFA polymer, I don't think this statement is inaccurate (i.e. I don't have the metabolic pathways off hand but these could be direct breakdown products given the shortness of the carbon chains - acetic acid almost certainly is.)
I mostly agree.
The main path for glucose involves splitting it in two 3 carbon molecules, mainly pyruvate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis From this it's easy to make acetic acid (2 carbons), like the acetic acid in vinegar. And , I guess it's also not very difficult to make propionic acid (3 carbons).
I can accept that they say that fiber or glucose is "break down" to acetic acid, propionic acid, but I think it's misleading. (And the usual definition of fatty acid starts at 4 carbons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid )
I had to search for the pathway to produce butyric acid (4 carbons). The main path is apparently splitting the glucose in pyruvate and adding a carbon to it, so it's not a direct break down. But there is an additional pathway, with glutaric acid, that perhaps may qualify, but I'm not convinced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00889-14/F1.expansion.html
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#39There is related work on dementia as well, wish I could find it. Something to do with increasing dietary ketones (using oils) to make up for glucose processing issues in people who were long term pre-diabetic.
It was a dinner conversation, where a guy was reasoning that some degenerative and autoimmune diseases were related to tissue starvation as a result of inhibited glucose processing, and he was using ketones (with some perceived success) to treat symptoms of his own auto-immune disorder.
It's not evidence or confirmation in any way, but for any biohackers out there it's something to play with.
Re: Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’
#40Last year, there was an interesting story about a woman who could smell a certain odour that seemed to be given off by people with Parkinson's (primarily her husband). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34583642
If it's ketones, then it would be easy to train a dog to detect it.