Treating Parkinson’s Disease With a Healthy Diet

Hippocrates stated:  “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health,” and the best way to do that is by what we eat.  For 20 years I have been consuming the best wild, natural, organic food available on earth and I can testify that this natural health food is fully nutritious (95% assimiable).  Taken in the correct amounts this food can have a dramatic effect on relieving your Parkinson’s side effects.

This nutritional program (your Parkinson’s diet) is based on the logic that the real magic bullets for reversing Parkinson’s and gaining health and vitality are in nutritional components found in foods, not pharmaceuticals (chemical, herbal or botanical formulas).  We now know scientifically that nutrients found in foods can help prevent nearly all the common degenerative diseases that strike us today.   Following this Parkinson’s diet can really make a difference for you.  

“You have your own individual potential for health,” says Udo Erasmus, in his book, Fats that Heal – Fats that Kill.  Erasmus also explains that there are at least four reasons we can rely on ourselves to find a natural nutritional cure for PD through the foods we eat (our diet) and that we are not to expect pharmaceutical drugs or even natural herbal and botanical formulas to accomplish our health goals.

1. Health is a natural state.

• Internally, our optimum health possibility is determined by our genetic makeup, which includes complex and sophisticated digestive, absorptive, constructive, maintaining, metabolic, protective, and healing mechanisms. Because individuals differ genetically, optimal health is also somewhat different for each individual.

• Externally, health is determined by the natural environment, which provides

2. Our body is made from foods, water, air, and light energy.

• The key to effective primary health care and reversing Parkinson’s is found in living as we would live, if we were in an ideal natural setting, where foods are fresh, alive, raw, sun-ripened, locally grown, in season, and pesticide-free.  Water is clean.  Air is clean.  Light is full-spectrum sunlight.
• From foods, water and air our body must derive 50+ essential factors to function in a healthy way, factors our bodies cannot make from other substances. These include 20 or 21 minerals; 13 vitamins; 8 to 11 essential amino acids; 2 essential fatty acids; water; air; light; and a source of energy (usually carbohydrates).
• Processing removes essential nutrients from foods and may also destroy nutrients or change them into toxic substances. Deficiencies of essential nutrients and toxicity in foods have both been documented in processed foods (p.414).

3. Parkinson’s is a departure from health.

• A departure from health is a departure from the ideal natural state, internally, externally, or both.

• The most common causes of Parkinson’s disease, (deficiency of essential substances or nutrient imbalances) and internal pollution (interfering substances such as pollutants, heavy metals, drugs, metabolic waste products, toxins produced by yeast, and toxins made in our body as a result of allergic reactions).

4. Parkinson’s can be reversed by changing the diet you are eating.

• Reversal of Parkinson’s disease by malnutrition and internal pollution requires improved nutrition and detoxification.
• Nutrition can be improved by the consumption of whole foods, fresh vegetables juices, super foods supplements and food concentrates.

Important guiding principle for a healthier body:

It should be kept in mind that the best Parkinson’s diet is one where you consume only original foods, or foods modified minimally, instead of consuming isolated or synthetic compounds (single amino acids, single essential fatty acids, vitamins or minerals). From foods, our bodies must derive all 50+ essential nutrients, on a daily basis, to function in a healthy way.  Deficiency of any of these essential nutrients can lead to degenerative processes and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.

It’s difficult to define the impact of a particular nutrient on any specific disease.  The reason is that nutrients work together synergistically, not separately, to improve physiological function, reduce disease risk and help the body defend itself against disease producing processes.

For example, it has been scientifically proven through clinical research that individuals with Parkinson’s appear to have deficiencies in important nutrients such as B12 which can contribute to postural tremor and numbness.   Instead of taking B12 as an individual supplement as many holistic doctors recommend (hydroxocobalamine or methylcobalamin), it is always better to eat foods high in the whole B complex such as organic micro algae. In nature, the B complex can be found in foods, but never does one find a single B vitamin isolated from the rest. The B vitamin family exists in a close interrelationship among each other’s that an inadequate intake of one may impair the utilization of others. Thus, large doses of one member of the B complex can create a vitamin imbalance and precipitate deficiency of other members of the B complex.

Therefore, we might think of “nutrition” and the “Parkinson’s diet” as the consumption of a family of related compounds that work together to enhance the body’s ability to function optimally throughout the genetically determined life span of the individual. How healthy an individual becomes depends on what he/she chooses to put into their body every day.  A very important concept to reverse migraine headaches is to eat (start eating) your way to better health by following a “reversing Parkinson’s” diet.

Goals of this nutritional Parkinson’s diet program:

• This program will help you adjust your diet. I focus in particular on the word “adjust” which is calming because it describes a process, not an event.  i.e., I can parallel park a car if I get to make adjustments as I go along.  So that’s what you’re going to do on your journey from one end of the dietary spectrum to the other.  You’re going to adjust your eating as you go along, fine tune it, in other words, until you achieve the results you seek.  I will be guiding and coaching you all along this nutritional healing diet free of charge.

• Since you will be seeking health, not avoiding illness, your journey is similar to a treasure hunt.  If you feel yourself trying to escape illness, or if you find yourself motivated by fear rather than hope, you’ve lost your way.  You are actually seeking life’s treasures, not avoiding its dangers.

• This natural Parkinson’s diet program will help you seek to balance your foods in order to balance your body.  Balance means a coupling of opposites, like breathing in and breathing out. All natural systems exist by coupling such opposites, and chronic illness such as Parkinson’s is a sign that one of the opposites has become too dominant, and the other too weak. (The concept of balancing acid and alkaline foods is an example of this). So with this diet you will balance the properties and functions of your foods in order to balance the properties and functions of your body.

• You don’t have to jump into this Parkinson’s diet program with both feet all at once.  If you choose, you may slowly change your way of living and diet to that which health is producing in your own time-frame.  You may set up one, two or five year health goals.  Take your time, as your body begins detoxifying and healing, it will become easier and more enjoyable to follow life enhancing health practices with your diet.

• Last, but not least, we hope that you will keep “diet” in perspective.  Please remember that food is not all there is to life.  We want this Parkinson’s diet program to be pleasing to your taste buds, not just health promoting.  We want you to be serious about this diet and your commitment to it, but not too serious.  We hope you anchor yourself in these guiding principles, yet try to be flexible, open-minded and wise.  And if you feel you have “failed” from time to time, just count your mistakes as information, not as defeat or as a cause of guilt.  Following this migraine diet is a happy journey that will be full of challenging times, some doubts and moments of victory followed by days, months and then a lifetime of health and vitality and a migraine free life.

I will be there for you every step of the way to coach you in this process which includes:

• Understanding what offending foods to avoid.   
• How to eat an acid/alkaline balanced diet in order to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.

References:
Erasmus, Udo.  (1993),  “Fats that Heal Fats that Kill.”  Burnaby, BC: Alive Books.  “Vitamin B12: Vital Nutrient for Good Health.” By Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD at Weston Price Foundation

When considering diet, don’t underestimate the importance of water.  

Click here for an article explaining how dehydration can cause disease.