14 ms·

Parkinson’s disease ‘may start in gut’

322 points by sjcsjc 10y ago

ianai 10y ago
I watched my great grandfather lose everything to Parkinson's. I really hope this leads to a treatment that stops the progression of symptoms and fast.
- simonh 10y ago
  My father suffered from the disease and passed away in October. Awful disease. This is great news, but it looks like any treatment based on this will still be quite some way off.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    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 ?
    - FroshKiller 10y ago
      Dementia is common as the disease progresses. Dementia is horrible.
      - agumonkey 10y ago
        As in Alzheimer's dementia ? ..
        FroshKiller 10y ago
        Yes, that's right.
        iaskwhy 10y ago
        Adding to this, dementia might be a "side" effect of the medication for the muscles' rigidity. It's hard to explain but eventually there comes a time when you need to opt between not being able to move or take the medication and start having more and more frequent surreal visions. My grandfather survived a few cancer appearances but during the last surgery to remove some cancer lumps he woke up as a completely new person. It seems the anesthesia triggered the first signs of Parkinson's and dementia exactly at the same time. He was pretty "normal" before the surgery but after it he couldn't walk and thought the hospital staff attacked him with dogs during the night. Fortunately (?) he didn't last long after that day but still had time to be kicked off from his home by my grandmother who couldn't handle the dementia. Sorry for the rant, I'm obviously not over it, will never be. Dementia is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.
        tcj_phx 10y ago
        > He was pretty "normal" before the surgery but after it he couldn't walk and thought the hospital staff attacked him with dogs during the night. Apparently delirium is a common side effect of whatever they do in hospitals. I came across this link last month: "Delirium: A Surprising Side Effect of Hospital Stays -- Often misdiagnosed as dementia, it can cause hallucinations and delusions" - http://www.nextavenue.org/delirium-a-surprising-side-effect-of-hospital-stays/ http://www.nextavenue.org/delirium-a-surprising-side-effect-... If you're lucky they'll feed you coconut oil (short saturated fatty acids are easily burned in the cells for energy) and the dementia will pass. If you're not lucky they'll give you "anti-psychotic" drugs to sedate you, or other interventions that ruin the metabolism. Many treatments have the side effect of ensuring the patient will never recover.
        illumin8 10y ago
        Out of curiosity, how does coconut oil help with "delirium"?
        tcj_phx 10y ago
        My thinking is that delirium is probably a symptom of impaired metabolism and/or malnourishment and/or insulin resistance. When a person's mitochondria can't make enough ATP to keep them going, sometimes they become delirious/psychotic [1]. Coconut oil is useful because of its high proportion of medium chain triglicerides. Longer fatty acids have to be transported with carnitine to be metabolized in the mitochondria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-chain_triglyceride#Medical_relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-chain_triglyceride#Medi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism#Fatty_acid_catabolism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism#Fatty_ac... The alcoholic brain tends to be insulin resistant, and uses acetate (a breakdown product of ethanol) as fuel, because glucose isn't available, or isn't can't be delivered to the mitochondria in sufficient quantity. [1] Thus, without careful assessment and history, delirium can easily be confused with a number of psychiatric disorders or long term organic brain syndromes, because many of the signs and symptoms of delirium are conditions also present in dementia, depression, and psychosis. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium (IMHO, doctors distinguish between "delirium" and "psychosis" because they don't realize they have similar etiologies.)
      - acomar 10y ago
        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.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    > but it looks like any treatment > based on this will still be > quite some way off I came away with the opposite impression. Wouldn't you just need a targetted antibiotic?
    - mabbo 10y ago
      Problem 1- targeting what? I don't think they've actually identified the specific bacteria, have they? Problem 2- can you actually make an antibiotic specifically target one bacteria only?
      - XorNot 10y ago
        Yes, in the form of a bacteriophage. They're well known, but limited normally because they are very species specific. But if you needed to kill exactly one type of bacteria, they'd be the tool to reach for.
        digi_owl 10y ago
        Best i can tell, the problem is not just that they are picky eaters but that they also keep mutating. thus you can't just mix a batch and shelve it for later usage.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - beef234 10y ago
      Fecal implant would be an obvious solution.
      - supercoder 10y ago
        Eat shit and don't die
      - ianai 10y ago
        That's my bet too.
  - k__ 10y ago
    My grandfather died of it too, 10 years ago. When I was young this disease shaped my perception of old age. Got my self tested (23andme) 5 years ago and luckily I don't seem to have any predispositions for it.
  - binarymax 10y ago
    I am so sorry for your loss. My uncle passed away from Parkinsons 20 years ago, when he was fully incapacitated and incapable of doing anything. As difficult as it is to witness, I cannot imagine the pain of the experience.
- trhway 10y ago
  >I really hope this leads to a treatment that stops the progression of symptoms and fast. it seems that it is just one among several paths to Parkinson's. Not being a doctor, just from googling, it seems that Parkinson's - specifically those protein clumps in the brain cells - is a result of inflammation, ie. immune system reaction. Some gut bacteria (or its by-product), as in this study, seems to be a trigger for such reaction. Looking into the spread of Parkinson's around the world - many places/localitites with high rates are completely different from each other - confirms to me that there are possibly many different triggers for such immune system reaction, one of them seems to be pesticides for example.
GeertVL 10y ago
Too little to late for my dad. R.I.P.
- feld 10y ago
  same, lost my father two weeks ago.
  - learned 10y ago
    Sorry for your loss.
gravelc 10y ago
Mother in law has had it for about 15 years (so has lived longer than expected). Currently has implanted electrodes in the brain, which fixes some issues and leads to others. Recovery is unlikely at this stage, but even preventing the disease from progressing further would be quite something.
codeulike 10y ago
Tldr: they showed certain gut bacteria are necessary for Parkinson's to progress (but not the sole cause) using an experiment with genetically identical mice.
- dekhn 10y ago
  More importantly, our understanding of parkinson's wasn't "Transformed", so much as, somebody ran a highly specific experiment on a substrain of mice that is not representative of humans, and tried to generalize their results.
andy_ppp 10y ago
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 dopamine focused and wearing their brains out? I wonder if diet can change the type of bacteria in the gut, the inflammation in the body, have a neuroprotective effect on the brain? Sounds like I'd try a ketogenic diet which has known neuroprotective effects, changes the bateria in your gut and reduces inflammation.
- Terr_ 10y ago
  I feel like your post is a is a rhetorical bait-and-switch: Only the first two points seem to be related to the article, the rest are from elsewhere and chosen ahead of time to guide the user towards a particular conclusion.
  - bArray 10y ago
    I think it's up to the reader to draw which ever conclusions they wish. I don't think this person is writing with any other purpose other than to share an opinion. But... If you have points to the contrary of what the person has said, please raise them instead of guessing at their motive.
  - andy_ppp 10y ago
    Maybe you are right, I was just thinking out loud about these things. Here is a very small scale study done in regard to this... https://www.charliefoundation.org/ketogenic-therapy/therapies-3/parkinsons-disease https://www.charliefoundation.org/ketogenic-therapy/therapie...
- bArray 10y ago
  Exactly my line of thinking. Sounds like a study should be done on the diets of those with Parkinson's compared to the "average" diet. There's a chance for too much or too little of something that could make a difference. I would also like to see a comprehensive study of the immune systems of those with and without, perhaps these people have little protection against these gut bacteria. The most interesting cases would be those with the right conditions for Parkinson's yet do not have it. I think those cases would be very revealing. It's also interesting that these bacteria are transferable across species. What if these bacteria are found in common meats from aanimal? When preparing an animal to remove it's meat, I imagine there's an off chance the gut is split in removal - which they probably just hose down the animal as not to waste the meat. Or perhaps the bacteria has the ability to spread in the host? This research has definitely opened up new avenues to look for root cause and possible prevention.
gus_massa 10y ago
From 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 what this means?
- dalore 10y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735932/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735932/ > Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), the end products of fermentation of dietary fibers by the anaerobic intestinal microbiota ... So yes, SCFAs are end products of the process. You are right. Technically they are breaking down fibre into SCFAs but it didn't say they were made of them.
- alexholehouse 10y ago
  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.)
  - gus_massa 10y ago
    I mostly agree. The main path for glucose involves splitting it in two 3 carbon molecules, mainly pyruvate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00889-14/F1.expansion.html http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00889-14/F1.expansion.html
fibbra 10y ago
There is need for research into what is happening in the gut, what the microbiome looks like and how it is influenced by food and stress. This research money can either come by government funding (ideal for basic research) or by private funding (focused, to produce top medicines). As it looks now, the private funding may not work because any remedy in the form of a medicine, would be applied a couple of times and that's it. There may not be enough money to make.
- kmonad 10y ago
  And there is, tons of it. Though I do agree that private investments need to find a niche beyond yoghurts. https://www.broadinstitute.org/hmp/human-microbiome-project https://www.broadinstitute.org/hmp/human-microbiome-project https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/topics/microbiome-inflammation https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/topics/microbiome-infla... http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/ http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  I would like to see what folk medicine traditions from around the world thought of and how they treated the stomach. They might not have known about bacteria, but given enough time some of them might have established some cause and effect of symptoms and treatments (typically herbal). We might learn from them hints to speed up or microbiome research. Right now, the information is very scattered and siloed, and very difficult to survey.
dtf 10y ago
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). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34583642 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34583642
- trendia 10y ago
  If it's ketones, then it would be easy to train a dog to detect it.
  - alex_hitchins 10y ago
    Is it ketones that animals pickup from cancer patients? I've heard of dogs able to 'sniff' out a cancer diagnoses.
  - NickM 10y ago
    I don't see any mention of ketones in the BBC article. What led you to that hypothesis?
    - pizza 10y ago
      Not GP but ketones have a fairly distinct and strong aroma. That said, if it were ketones, they'd probably be too distinguishable for this story to be uniquely news-worthy.. it's probably a less identifiable smell than ketones, whatever it is..
  - spangry 10y ago
    Interesting you mention this, as I've reached a similar (albeit very preliminary) conclusion while researching a medication I've been forced on top by the so-called state govt 'chief health officer'. It has wrecked my life, and I'm fairly convinced it is causing prolonged ketoacidosis. It's also likely that it's exposing me to greatly increased risk of Parkinson's disease, which killed my grandfather and is currently in the process of killing my uncle. But enough of that sob story. One of the theorised causes of Parkinson's and diseases in the same class is the endogenous formation of persistent prions. Prions are proteins that are 'defective' and fold abnormally. Your body will likely destroying/metabolise prions in fairly short order; a good thing because newly synthesised proteins (mostly from amino acid metabolism) 'learn' how to fold themselves from other proteins. If they happen to learn from a "prion", one that's likely avoided being metabolised for an abnormally long time, this behaviour can spread and proteins begin to behave abnormally, in some cases forming plaques on vein and arterial structures in the body. This is obviously bad. It's arguably worse for someone in ketosis, as their brain is burning proteins for fuel door to depleted glyco-something (sorry, the name escapes me, it's the sugar your brain uses for energy). So now some of these prions migrate to various synapses (presumably the most energy hungry ones) and behind to form plaques on these synaptic structures. In addition, my recent (totally amateur) theory is that ketosis increases the rate of prion occurrence. In ketosis, you're metabolising unusually high levels of amino acids/proteins. So more risk of a bad or incomplete enzymatic reaction. In many cases this metabolism occurs in red blood cells, where amino acids capture, and are broken apart by, hydrogen atoms (ions?). So now you're entire system is under more oxidative stress, you're burning proteins and synthesising new ones at a high rate, is difficult to stay hydrated due to all these hydrogen atoms going missing, and one of the byproducts of some AA hydrogenation is ultimately acetone (paint striper). Also the metabolites are highly acidic, which unbalances your plasma pH levels and further interferes with normal metabolic processes. Interestingly is not necessarily unbalanced towards 'acid', as one might expect. The reasons are still unclear to me, but I'm guessing it's something like "homeostasis gone mad". And acetone is what dogs can be trained to detect: to try and rid your body of the excess acetone, you start respiring (exhaling) acetone, with its trademark "over ripe fruit" smell.
apinstein 10y ago
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 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.
- sgt101 10y ago
  My father has Parkinson's and has severe osteoporosis, I wonder if there is a connection.
  - amelius 10y ago
    It could be the case. But in order to find out, the best way would be to correlate both conditions with medical reports of a large number of patients. A platform like [1] could help in sorting this out. (Question: Does anybody know other/better platforms for this purpose? Does anybody have positive experience in doing this kind of research using such platform?) [1] http://patientslikeme.com http://patientslikeme.com
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      The best platforms for this sort of research in the US are internal proprietary toolkits of health insurance companies, auditing companies, and law firms. The profit motives of the US health care system don't currently incentivize putting these platforms to use for science, they are mostly used for (re-) billing. (Source: Worked for an auditing/law firm company deep on their platform once. Have friends still in health insurance/auditing/law firms.) As for an anecdotal positive experience, one of my friends working for a health insurance company did find a correlation in lack of remissions of a very specific form of cancer and the use of a prescription drug by datamining health insurance records and helped publish that as a cure for that very specific cancer. But given the way the industries are incentivized and fight among each other and fail to cooperate, I fear I have plenty more negative anecdotes than positive ones of things researched on top of these walled garden platforms.
Linsorld 10y ago
Biologist 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 https://phylogenomics.blogspot.fr/p/blog-page.html
fatdog 10y ago
There 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.
- fatdog 10y ago
  not to reply to own thread on theme, but want to also add ketogenic diet was also used for treating "epilepsy," now known as a general class of seizure disorders, which are related to many issues, among them brain lesions. I have zero medical background, and if you are searching on this stuff, my point is that beyond the political stuff, there is something up with sugar.
- spangry 10y ago
  Just to provide the counter-point: also possible that increased protein metabolism and synthesis (the defining feature of ketogenic diets) increases the likely hood of long -lived prions: proteins that fold abnormally, which can be learned by other newly synthesised proteins leading to these "mutant proteins" forming plaques on the brain (which is now burning protein for energy due to depletion of glucose). And there might be a runaway/tipping point somewhere here: some amino acids have acidic metabolites and also need to capture hydrogen ions from red blood cells to metabolise/synthesise protein. Some of these metabolites also cause acetone build up in body, which starts to be expelled via lungs. So combo of high rates of protein synthesis, abnormal blood plasma pH balance and increases cell oxidisation and anion gap == greater rate of prion formation and survival. This is just a personal hypothesis, no real evidence to back it up. Just suggesting caution should be exercised here. PD is a horrible disease, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
  - fatdog 10y ago
    It's important to discuss. There is a lot of stuff out there that screams snakeoil about MCT and coconut oil products, and it can have the effect of both discouraging legit research and duping the dupable. If there were only a way to test medical hypothesis like hacking on code. Maybe a platform to crowdsource data for experiments then control for factors and double blind it.
trendia 10y ago
This is especially interesting, since coffee is moderately protective for Parkinson's. Does that mean the coffee may be working at the gut level rather than its caffeine working in the brain? On second thought, coffee definitely works on the gut in normal people, if you know what I mean.
- spangry 10y ago
  Interesting. Might the effect be due to coffee's acidity? When you drink coffee, the environment in your stomach becomes more acidic, which would (just speculating) make it more effective at destroying/metabolising any mal-folded amino-acid metabolites/proteins (i.e. prions, scary stuff). Pharmacokinetics does not seem to be particularly well understood currently, but we do seem to be finding it's much more important than we thought. That, and whatever you call the 'study of metabolism' (metabolomics?)...
- PascLeRasc 10y ago
  I remember reading that study too but I think coffee was only shown to be significantly protective for 8-10+ cups/day.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Wondering if decaf would be as useful as caffeinated for this purpose?
nonbel 10y ago
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 1999 57 1998 57 1997 54 1996 35 1995 30 1994 17 1993 18 1992 23 1991 24 1990 24 1989 25 1988 27 1987 14 1986 11 1985 20 1984 10 1983 10 1982 8 1981 9 1980 10 1979 13 1978 11 1977 7 1976 10 1975 3 1974 2 1972 1 1971 3 1970 2 1969 2 1968 2 1967 2 1966 3 1965 2 1964 2 1963 3 1961 2 1958 1 1956 1
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
  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 catch on. However, if the concept has legs, more and more research will take place until we understand the concept enough for it to become a part of every day life.
  - nonbel 10y ago
    >"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.
varchar1 10y ago
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.
ccvannorman 10y ago
I found a related article that lists specific bacteria for anyone interested: http://www.parkinson.org/find-help/blogs/whats-hot/january-2015 http://www.parkinson.org/find-help/blogs/whats-hot/january-2...
Allower 10y ago
So yeah, yet again, scientists are shown to have been overconfident in their early understanding of something. Why are most people SO FUCKING STUPID
laypersonjoe 10y ago
By country. Does gut bacteria have differentiation by region/country/diet and by extension can some diets be less causative? http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/parkinson-disease/by-country/ http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/parkinson-...
- zdean 10y ago
  I'm not sure if it has differentiation, but lifestyle factors could have an impact. If, for example, in more developed countries there's a great emphasis on (especially) childhood cleanliness, it may be affecting the development of "good" bacteria: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151118-can-you-be-too-clean http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151118-can-you-be-too-clea... Another lifestyle example could be the prevalence of C-section births in more developed countries: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110651/
  - laypersonjoe 10y ago
    From the map I linked above, developed countries seem to have high rates. Parkinson's doesn't seem to discriminate there, so is there any other thing interesting by country? Spurious and sounds silly, but spicy foods, maybe?
    - spangry 10y ago
      That would be an interesting data point. Highly acidic...
- sushid 10y ago
  A silbing comment mentions some causes such as over-cleanliness and c-section, but other more detrimental effects may be lack of breast milk in infancy and antibiotics use (particularly as a toddler/infant). Some other supporting causes may be things like overuse of antibiotics in meat production and lack of fermented food in diet.
soundwave106 10y ago
For those who want to explore deeper, I think this article is referencing a paper published in Cell recently: http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31590-2 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31590-2
sushid 10y ago
To those familiar with various skin conditions, this may not be a big surprise Skin conditions such as seborrheic dermatitis disproportionately affect those with HIV or Parkinson's and those skin conditions themselves have been liked to gut health, although not widely received in the medical community. Seeing as how many skin ailments are linked to those with early or long term use to antibiotics (e.g. childhood ear infections, antibiotic use as infants), and Parkinson's patients are disproportionately affected by them, this is an even greater reminder that gut flora health is something not to be taken lightly.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  So how do you go about actually fixing it? I've had that condition in a minor form for pretty much my entire life, getting worse when I was a teenager. I've gone to many derms and they all end up just giving me some form of corticosteroids. I've tried vegan diets, various supplements, probiotics, natrual paths, salt baths, oatmeal baths and on and on, and it doesn't do much other than treat symptoms. I haven't tried to fix it any further because it's just a minor annoyance in my life, but I'm all ears if there is something that explains it better and some measurement that I can use to help understand it.
  - sushid 10y ago
    I would say first and foremost, avoid all uses of topical steroids and topical antifungals. And do not use antibiotics "just in case" (this is common for routine dental surgeries, but unnecessary). I do know from enough anecdotal evidence and reading published literature that those are only stopgaps and will eventually make your symptoms worse. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor and I don't exactly know either. All I know is that there are serious links to diseases like IBS, Crohn's, dementia, Parkinson's, seb/atopic dermatitis, etc. that many have known to be associated with gut that is being only proven in recent years. Personally, I have reduced my intake of carbs (even "healthy" carbs) to a minimum. I eat a small serving of carbs when I'm eating other food, but never a small serving of carbs by itself. I rarely eat anything with yeast or sugar, which is a dealbreaker for most people. I drink kefir and kombucha in small amounts and I take copious servings of probiotics. Right now I'm taking synthol and garden of life but I'll switch to a different set in a few months. I also consume a lot of natto, kimchi (you can make this at home), and organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar. I apply a very small amount of sea salt and water and keep it on everyday and clean my face with ACV for a few minutes each morning and evening.

322 points by sjcsjc 10y ago

ianai 10y ago

I watched my great grandfather lose everything to Parkinson's. I really hope this leads to a treatment that stops the progression of symptoms and fast.

simonh 10y ago
My father suffered from the disease and passed away in October. Awful disease. This is great news, but it looks like any treatment based on this will still be quite some way off.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  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 ?
  - FroshKiller 10y ago
    Dementia is common as the disease progresses. Dementia is horrible.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      As in Alzheimer's dementia ? ..
      - FroshKiller 10y ago
        Yes, that's right.
        iaskwhy 10y ago
        Adding to this, dementia might be a "side" effect of the medication for the muscles' rigidity. It's hard to explain but eventually there comes a time when you need to opt between not being able to move or take the medication and start having more and more frequent surreal visions. My grandfather survived a few cancer appearances but during the last surgery to remove some cancer lumps he woke up as a completely new person. It seems the anesthesia triggered the first signs of Parkinson's and dementia exactly at the same time. He was pretty "normal" before the surgery but after it he couldn't walk and thought the hospital staff attacked him with dogs during the night. Fortunately (?) he didn't last long after that day but still had time to be kicked off from his home by my grandmother who couldn't handle the dementia. Sorry for the rant, I'm obviously not over it, will never be. Dementia is the worst thing I've ever witnessed.
        tcj_phx 10y ago
        > He was pretty "normal" before the surgery but after it he couldn't walk and thought the hospital staff attacked him with dogs during the night. Apparently delirium is a common side effect of whatever they do in hospitals. I came across this link last month: "Delirium: A Surprising Side Effect of Hospital Stays -- Often misdiagnosed as dementia, it can cause hallucinations and delusions" - http://www.nextavenue.org/delirium-a-surprising-side-effect-of-hospital-stays/ http://www.nextavenue.org/delirium-a-surprising-side-effect-... If you're lucky they'll feed you coconut oil (short saturated fatty acids are easily burned in the cells for energy) and the dementia will pass. If you're not lucky they'll give you "anti-psychotic" drugs to sedate you, or other interventions that ruin the metabolism. Many treatments have the side effect of ensuring the patient will never recover.
        illumin8 10y ago
        Out of curiosity, how does coconut oil help with "delirium"?
        tcj_phx 10y ago
        My thinking is that delirium is probably a symptom of impaired metabolism and/or malnourishment and/or insulin resistance. When a person's mitochondria can't make enough ATP to keep them going, sometimes they become delirious/psychotic [1]. Coconut oil is useful because of its high proportion of medium chain triglicerides. Longer fatty acids have to be transported with carnitine to be metabolized in the mitochondria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-chain_triglyceride#Medical_relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-chain_triglyceride#Medi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism#Fatty_acid_catabolism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatty_acid_metabolism#Fatty_ac... The alcoholic brain tends to be insulin resistant, and uses acetate (a breakdown product of ethanol) as fuel, because glucose isn't available, or isn't can't be delivered to the mitochondria in sufficient quantity. [1] Thus, without careful assessment and history, delirium can easily be confused with a number of psychiatric disorders or long term organic brain syndromes, because many of the signs and symptoms of delirium are conditions also present in dementia, depression, and psychosis. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium (IMHO, doctors distinguish between "delirium" and "psychosis" because they don't realize they have similar etiologies.)
    - acomar 10y ago
      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.
- peteretep 10y ago
  > but it looks like any treatment > based on this will still be > quite some way off I came away with the opposite impression. Wouldn't you just need a targetted antibiotic?
  - mabbo 10y ago
    Problem 1- targeting what? I don't think they've actually identified the specific bacteria, have they? Problem 2- can you actually make an antibiotic specifically target one bacteria only?
    - XorNot 10y ago
      Yes, in the form of a bacteriophage. They're well known, but limited normally because they are very species specific. But if you needed to kill exactly one type of bacteria, they'd be the tool to reach for.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        Best i can tell, the problem is not just that they are picky eaters but that they also keep mutating. thus you can't just mix a batch and shelve it for later usage.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - beef234 10y ago
    Fecal implant would be an obvious solution.
    - supercoder 10y ago
      Eat shit and don't die
    - ianai 10y ago
      That's my bet too.
- k__ 10y ago
  My grandfather died of it too, 10 years ago. When I was young this disease shaped my perception of old age. Got my self tested (23andme) 5 years ago and luckily I don't seem to have any predispositions for it.
- binarymax 10y ago
  I am so sorry for your loss. My uncle passed away from Parkinsons 20 years ago, when he was fully incapacitated and incapable of doing anything. As difficult as it is to witness, I cannot imagine the pain of the experience.
trhway 10y ago
>I really hope this leads to a treatment that stops the progression of symptoms and fast. it seems that it is just one among several paths to Parkinson's. Not being a doctor, just from googling, it seems that Parkinson's - specifically those protein clumps in the brain cells - is a result of inflammation, ie. immune system reaction. Some gut bacteria (or its by-product), as in this study, seems to be a trigger for such reaction. Looking into the spread of Parkinson's around the world - many places/localitites with high rates are completely different from each other - confirms to me that there are possibly many different triggers for such immune system reaction, one of them seems to be pesticides for example.

GeertVL 10y ago

Too little to late for my dad. R.I.P.

feld 10y ago
same, lost my father two weeks ago.
- learned 10y ago
  Sorry for your loss.

gravelc 10y ago

Mother in law has had it for about 15 years (so has lived longer than expected). Currently has implanted electrodes in the brain, which fixes some issues and leads to others. Recovery is unlikely at this stage, but even preventing the disease from progressing further would be quite something.

codeulike 10y ago

Tldr: they showed certain gut bacteria are necessary for Parkinson's to progress (but not the sole cause) using an experiment with genetically identical mice.

dekhn 10y ago
More importantly, our understanding of parkinson's wasn't "Transformed", so much as, somebody ran a highly specific experiment on a substrain of mice that is not representative of humans, and tried to generalize their results.

andy_ppp 10y ago

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 dopamine focused and wearing their brains out? I wonder if diet can change the type of bacteria in the gut, the inflammation in the body, have a neuroprotective effect on the brain? Sounds like I'd try a ketogenic diet which has known neuroprotective effects, changes the bateria in your gut and reduces inflammation.

Terr_ 10y ago
I feel like your post is a is a rhetorical bait-and-switch: Only the first two points seem to be related to the article, the rest are from elsewhere and chosen ahead of time to guide the user towards a particular conclusion.
- bArray 10y ago
  I think it's up to the reader to draw which ever conclusions they wish. I don't think this person is writing with any other purpose other than to share an opinion. But... If you have points to the contrary of what the person has said, please raise them instead of guessing at their motive.
- andy_ppp 10y ago
  Maybe you are right, I was just thinking out loud about these things. Here is a very small scale study done in regard to this... https://www.charliefoundation.org/ketogenic-therapy/therapies-3/parkinsons-disease https://www.charliefoundation.org/ketogenic-therapy/therapie...
bArray 10y ago
Exactly my line of thinking. Sounds like a study should be done on the diets of those with Parkinson's compared to the "average" diet. There's a chance for too much or too little of something that could make a difference. I would also like to see a comprehensive study of the immune systems of those with and without, perhaps these people have little protection against these gut bacteria. The most interesting cases would be those with the right conditions for Parkinson's yet do not have it. I think those cases would be very revealing. It's also interesting that these bacteria are transferable across species. What if these bacteria are found in common meats from aanimal? When preparing an animal to remove it's meat, I imagine there's an off chance the gut is split in removal - which they probably just hose down the animal as not to waste the meat. Or perhaps the bacteria has the ability to spread in the host? This research has definitely opened up new avenues to look for root cause and possible prevention.

gus_massa 10y ago

From 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 what this means?

dalore 10y ago
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735932/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735932/ > Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), the end products of fermentation of dietary fibers by the anaerobic intestinal microbiota ... So yes, SCFAs are end products of the process. You are right. Technically they are breaking down fibre into SCFAs but it didn't say they were made of them.
alexholehouse 10y ago
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.)
- gus_massa 10y ago
  I mostly agree. The main path for glucose involves splitting it in two 3 carbon molecules, mainly pyruvate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyric_acid http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00889-14/F1.expansion.html http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e00889-14/F1.expansion.html

fibbra 10y ago

There is need for research into what is happening in the gut, what the microbiome looks like and how it is influenced by food and stress. This research money can either come by government funding (ideal for basic research) or by private funding (focused, to produce top medicines). As it looks now, the private funding may not work because any remedy in the form of a medicine, would be applied a couple of times and that's it. There may not be enough money to make.

kmonad 10y ago
And there is, tons of it. Though I do agree that private investments need to find a niche beyond yoghurts. https://www.broadinstitute.org/hmp/human-microbiome-project https://www.broadinstitute.org/hmp/human-microbiome-project https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/topics/microbiome-inflammation https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/topics/microbiome-infla... http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/ http://humanfoodproject.com/americangut/
yourapostasy 10y ago
I would like to see what folk medicine traditions from around the world thought of and how they treated the stomach. They might not have known about bacteria, but given enough time some of them might have established some cause and effect of symptoms and treatments (typically herbal). We might learn from them hints to speed up or microbiome research. Right now, the information is very scattered and siloed, and very difficult to survey.

dtf 10y ago

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). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34583642 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-34583642

trendia 10y ago
If it's ketones, then it would be easy to train a dog to detect it.
- alex_hitchins 10y ago
  Is it ketones that animals pickup from cancer patients? I've heard of dogs able to 'sniff' out a cancer diagnoses.
- NickM 10y ago
  I don't see any mention of ketones in the BBC article. What led you to that hypothesis?
  - pizza 10y ago
    Not GP but ketones have a fairly distinct and strong aroma. That said, if it were ketones, they'd probably be too distinguishable for this story to be uniquely news-worthy.. it's probably a less identifiable smell than ketones, whatever it is..
- spangry 10y ago
  Interesting you mention this, as I've reached a similar (albeit very preliminary) conclusion while researching a medication I've been forced on top by the so-called state govt 'chief health officer'. It has wrecked my life, and I'm fairly convinced it is causing prolonged ketoacidosis. It's also likely that it's exposing me to greatly increased risk of Parkinson's disease, which killed my grandfather and is currently in the process of killing my uncle. But enough of that sob story. One of the theorised causes of Parkinson's and diseases in the same class is the endogenous formation of persistent prions. Prions are proteins that are 'defective' and fold abnormally. Your body will likely destroying/metabolise prions in fairly short order; a good thing because newly synthesised proteins (mostly from amino acid metabolism) 'learn' how to fold themselves from other proteins. If they happen to learn from a "prion", one that's likely avoided being metabolised for an abnormally long time, this behaviour can spread and proteins begin to behave abnormally, in some cases forming plaques on vein and arterial structures in the body. This is obviously bad. It's arguably worse for someone in ketosis, as their brain is burning proteins for fuel door to depleted glyco-something (sorry, the name escapes me, it's the sugar your brain uses for energy). So now some of these prions migrate to various synapses (presumably the most energy hungry ones) and behind to form plaques on these synaptic structures. In addition, my recent (totally amateur) theory is that ketosis increases the rate of prion occurrence. In ketosis, you're metabolising unusually high levels of amino acids/proteins. So more risk of a bad or incomplete enzymatic reaction. In many cases this metabolism occurs in red blood cells, where amino acids capture, and are broken apart by, hydrogen atoms (ions?). So now you're entire system is under more oxidative stress, you're burning proteins and synthesising new ones at a high rate, is difficult to stay hydrated due to all these hydrogen atoms going missing, and one of the byproducts of some AA hydrogenation is ultimately acetone (paint striper). Also the metabolites are highly acidic, which unbalances your plasma pH levels and further interferes with normal metabolic processes. Interestingly is not necessarily unbalanced towards 'acid', as one might expect. The reasons are still unclear to me, but I'm guessing it's something like "homeostasis gone mad". And acetone is what dogs can be trained to detect: to try and rid your body of the excess acetone, you start respiring (exhaling) acetone, with its trademark "over ripe fruit" smell.

apinstein 10y ago

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 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.

sgt101 10y ago
My father has Parkinson's and has severe osteoporosis, I wonder if there is a connection.
- amelius 10y ago
  It could be the case. But in order to find out, the best way would be to correlate both conditions with medical reports of a large number of patients. A platform like [1] could help in sorting this out. (Question: Does anybody know other/better platforms for this purpose? Does anybody have positive experience in doing this kind of research using such platform?) [1] http://patientslikeme.com http://patientslikeme.com
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    The best platforms for this sort of research in the US are internal proprietary toolkits of health insurance companies, auditing companies, and law firms. The profit motives of the US health care system don't currently incentivize putting these platforms to use for science, they are mostly used for (re-) billing. (Source: Worked for an auditing/law firm company deep on their platform once. Have friends still in health insurance/auditing/law firms.) As for an anecdotal positive experience, one of my friends working for a health insurance company did find a correlation in lack of remissions of a very specific form of cancer and the use of a prescription drug by datamining health insurance records and helped publish that as a cure for that very specific cancer. But given the way the industries are incentivized and fight among each other and fail to cooperate, I fear I have plenty more negative anecdotes than positive ones of things researched on top of these walled garden platforms.

Linsorld 10y ago

Biologist 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 https://phylogenomics.blogspot.fr/p/blog-page.html

fatdog 10y ago

There 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.

fatdog 10y ago
not to reply to own thread on theme, but want to also add ketogenic diet was also used for treating "epilepsy," now known as a general class of seizure disorders, which are related to many issues, among them brain lesions. I have zero medical background, and if you are searching on this stuff, my point is that beyond the political stuff, there is something up with sugar.
spangry 10y ago
Just to provide the counter-point: also possible that increased protein metabolism and synthesis (the defining feature of ketogenic diets) increases the likely hood of long -lived prions: proteins that fold abnormally, which can be learned by other newly synthesised proteins leading to these "mutant proteins" forming plaques on the brain (which is now burning protein for energy due to depletion of glucose). And there might be a runaway/tipping point somewhere here: some amino acids have acidic metabolites and also need to capture hydrogen ions from red blood cells to metabolise/synthesise protein. Some of these metabolites also cause acetone build up in body, which starts to be expelled via lungs. So combo of high rates of protein synthesis, abnormal blood plasma pH balance and increases cell oxidisation and anion gap == greater rate of prion formation and survival. This is just a personal hypothesis, no real evidence to back it up. Just suggesting caution should be exercised here. PD is a horrible disease, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
- fatdog 10y ago
  It's important to discuss. There is a lot of stuff out there that screams snakeoil about MCT and coconut oil products, and it can have the effect of both discouraging legit research and duping the dupable. If there were only a way to test medical hypothesis like hacking on code. Maybe a platform to crowdsource data for experiments then control for factors and double blind it.

trendia 10y ago

This is especially interesting, since coffee is moderately protective for Parkinson's. Does that mean the coffee may be working at the gut level rather than its caffeine working in the brain? On second thought, coffee definitely works on the gut in normal people, if you know what I mean.

spangry 10y ago
Interesting. Might the effect be due to coffee's acidity? When you drink coffee, the environment in your stomach becomes more acidic, which would (just speculating) make it more effective at destroying/metabolising any mal-folded amino-acid metabolites/proteins (i.e. prions, scary stuff). Pharmacokinetics does not seem to be particularly well understood currently, but we do seem to be finding it's much more important than we thought. That, and whatever you call the 'study of metabolism' (metabolomics?)...
PascLeRasc 10y ago
I remember reading that study too but I think coffee was only shown to be significantly protective for 8-10+ cups/day.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Wondering if decaf would be as useful as caffeinated for this purpose?

nonbel 10y ago

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 1999 57 1998 57 1997 54 1996 35 1995 30 1994 17 1993 18 1992 23 1991 24 1990 24 1989 25 1988 27 1987 14 1986 11 1985 20 1984 10 1983 10 1982 8 1981 9 1980 10 1979 13 1978 11 1977 7 1976 10 1975 3 1974 2 1972 1 1971 3 1970 2 1969 2 1968 2 1967 2 1966 3 1965 2 1964 2 1963 3 1961 2 1958 1 1956 1

Benjamin_Dobell 10y ago
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 catch on. However, if the concept has legs, more and more research will take place until we understand the concept enough for it to become a part of every day life.
- nonbel 10y ago
  >"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.

varchar1 10y ago

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.

ccvannorman 10y ago

I found a related article that lists specific bacteria for anyone interested: http://www.parkinson.org/find-help/blogs/whats-hot/january-2015 http://www.parkinson.org/find-help/blogs/whats-hot/january-2...

Allower 10y ago

So yeah, yet again, scientists are shown to have been overconfident in their early understanding of something. Why are most people SO FUCKING STUPID

laypersonjoe 10y ago

By country. Does gut bacteria have differentiation by region/country/diet and by extension can some diets be less causative? http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/parkinson-disease/by-country/ http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/parkinson-...

zdean 10y ago
I'm not sure if it has differentiation, but lifestyle factors could have an impact. If, for example, in more developed countries there's a great emphasis on (especially) childhood cleanliness, it may be affecting the development of "good" bacteria: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151118-can-you-be-too-clean http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151118-can-you-be-too-clea... Another lifestyle example could be the prevalence of C-section births in more developed countries: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110651/
- laypersonjoe 10y ago
  From the map I linked above, developed countries seem to have high rates. Parkinson's doesn't seem to discriminate there, so is there any other thing interesting by country? Spurious and sounds silly, but spicy foods, maybe?
  - spangry 10y ago
    That would be an interesting data point. Highly acidic...
sushid 10y ago
A silbing comment mentions some causes such as over-cleanliness and c-section, but other more detrimental effects may be lack of breast milk in infancy and antibiotics use (particularly as a toddler/infant). Some other supporting causes may be things like overuse of antibiotics in meat production and lack of fermented food in diet.

soundwave106 10y ago

For those who want to explore deeper, I think this article is referencing a paper published in Cell recently: http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31590-2 http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(16)31590-2

sushid 10y ago

To those familiar with various skin conditions, this may not be a big surprise Skin conditions such as seborrheic dermatitis disproportionately affect those with HIV or Parkinson's and those skin conditions themselves have been liked to gut health, although not widely received in the medical community. Seeing as how many skin ailments are linked to those with early or long term use to antibiotics (e.g. childhood ear infections, antibiotic use as infants), and Parkinson's patients are disproportionately affected by them, this is an even greater reminder that gut flora health is something not to be taken lightly.

mahyarm 10y ago
So how do you go about actually fixing it? I've had that condition in a minor form for pretty much my entire life, getting worse when I was a teenager. I've gone to many derms and they all end up just giving me some form of corticosteroids. I've tried vegan diets, various supplements, probiotics, natrual paths, salt baths, oatmeal baths and on and on, and it doesn't do much other than treat symptoms. I haven't tried to fix it any further because it's just a minor annoyance in my life, but I'm all ears if there is something that explains it better and some measurement that I can use to help understand it.
- sushid 10y ago
  I would say first and foremost, avoid all uses of topical steroids and topical antifungals. And do not use antibiotics "just in case" (this is common for routine dental surgeries, but unnecessary). I do know from enough anecdotal evidence and reading published literature that those are only stopgaps and will eventually make your symptoms worse. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor and I don't exactly know either. All I know is that there are serious links to diseases like IBS, Crohn's, dementia, Parkinson's, seb/atopic dermatitis, etc. that many have known to be associated with gut that is being only proven in recent years. Personally, I have reduced my intake of carbs (even "healthy" carbs) to a minimum. I eat a small serving of carbs when I'm eating other food, but never a small serving of carbs by itself. I rarely eat anything with yeast or sugar, which is a dealbreaker for most people. I drink kefir and kombucha in small amounts and I take copious servings of probiotics. Right now I'm taking synthol and garden of life but I'll switch to a different set in a few months. I also consume a lot of natto, kimchi (you can make this at home), and organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar. I apply a very small amount of sea salt and water and keep it on everyday and clean my face with ACV for a few minutes each morning and evening.