Name: Podcast: Treating Parkinson’s with Diet
Uploaded: 2023-07-17T21:33:14.000Z
Duration: 12 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

You know the feeling you get when you learn something new

about a health problem you've been trying to reverse?

Maybe high blood pressure, diabetes, or heart disease.

Well, there's nothing I like better than bringing you the information

since Parkinson's is caused by a dopamine deficiency in the brain,

what if you ate foods rich in the dopamine precursor—levodopa?

Two centuries have passed since James Parkinson's Essay

on the Shaking Palsy described a disease characterized

Today, treatment options include surgically

We've known since the 1950's that Parkinson's disease

is manifested by a dopamine deficiency in the brain.

A variety of fruits and vegetables contain

Unfortunately, dopamine can't cross the blood-brain barrier

and hence is ineffective as therapy, however the dopamine precursor,

known as l-dopa or levodopa can get from the blood up into the brain

where it can then be converted to dopamine within the brain

We don't want the levodopa to be converted to dopamine

outside the brain because then it can't get in,

so we give people a decarboxylase inhibitor which itself

can't get into the brain, so that keeps levodopa from prematurely

turning into dopamine before it gets into the brain where we need it.

So eating dopamine- rich foods doesn't help,

More than 1500 years before Dr. Parkinson came on the scene,

an Indian physician seems to have nailed it

and even suggested a treatment, velvet beans,

the plant with the highest amount of L-DOPA.

forestall the epidemic of Parkinson's Disease

Levodopa is the gold standard therapy for Parkinson's patients,

but most Parkinson's patients in low-income areas

cannot afford long-term daily Levodopa therapy.

In rural Africa, for example, it is estimated that

only 15% of patients are treated with levodopa,

because the daily cost of Levodopa treatment is about a dollar day,

which may be half of what people make in a day.

Same with other regions in the Global South.

L-DOPA is mostly unavailable or unaffordable.

So patients frequently use powdered velvet beans

as a replacement or supplement to the drug.

Velvet beans in Parkinson's Disease a randomized,

double blind, clinical study, and, a dose of 30g,

which is about three tablespoons led to a reliable and sustained

working significantly quicker than the drug,

working significantly longer than the drug,

and working significantly better than the drug,

in another double-blind, randomized, head-to-head crossover study.

The levodopa in velvet beans appears to be 2–3 times

more potent as compared to the same dose of pill-form Levodopa,

suspected to be because there may be some intrinsic

decarboxylase inhibitor compound in the plant as well.

What about the chronic use of velvet beans for Parkinson's.

Fourteen patients with advanced Parkinson's received

roasted velvet bean powder or the standard drug,

switching back and forth for months, looking at changes

in quality of life, activities of daily living,

without troublesome involuntary writhing movements

and the velvet beans seemed to work as well as the drug

in all measures of efﬁcacy, including quality of life.

Despite the efficacy, the chances of this cheap herbal remedy

ever being licensed seems unlikely—and for good reason.

First of all, the stuff evidently tastes nasty.

While velvet beans may potentially be part of the answer

in low-income countries, in high-income countries,

one may be tempted to prefer them to drugs

just because it's a "more natural therapy,"

but researchers discourage patients and physicians

to consider its use when the drugs are available.

the first-line treatment for Parkinson's.

However, velvet bean powder may be better tolerated

Psychologically, some patients just have a thing against

But otherwise, velvet bean supplements suffer from

the issues common to all supplements, specifically lack

of sufficient regulation and quality control.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Podcast: Treating Parkinson’s with Diet

evidence

dopamine

therapy

treat