Maintaining a diet for Parkinson’s disease can be challenging. There’s no set of hard and fast rules for it. Still, there are a lot of factors in your diet and nutrition that you can adjust to help minimize the effects of PD, and to make sure you’re getting the most out of your medication.
Making sure to eat enough is important, as weight loss can occur at any stage of Parkinson’s, even early ones. Some studies suggest that weight loss itself may even be a contributor to Parkinson’s, as neurotoxic chemicals that are stored in fat are released. On the other hand, Parkinson’s may lead to weight loss. There could be any number of reasons, from depressed mood, to medication side effects, to the sheer fact that many people with PD may have trouble chewing and swallowing food.
At the end of the day, a diet that focuses on minimizing inflammation, getting lots of fruits and vegetables, and doing your best to help your gut motility can go a long way towards maintaining your comfort and your health. So too can minding your dopamine, both with regular use of levodopa and with dietary management from Neuralli MP.
Can diet help Parkinson’s?
There isn’t yet a specific “Parkinson’s disease diet” to follow. But there are some diets that have been studied in PD, and these share in common a lot of foods that we know are useful in helping to manage PD. Like with any healthy diet, it’s important to get lots of fruits, whole grains, vegetables, and lean protein.
For people with Parkinson’s, the timing and amount of protein are particularly important because of how levodopa, one of the main medications for PD, interacts with the same amino acid transporters in your body that dietary protein does.
One other consideration in a diet for Parkinson’s disease is antioxidants. PD and inflammation are deeply connected. Evidence for the effects of dietary antioxidants on PD is mixed, but while you’re going to the effort to eat healthier anyway, you may as well do everything you can.
If any of this is confusing, don’t worry! We’ll talk about what all of it means, what your body needs, and what kinds of foods to find them in as we go along.
The Mediterranean diet and Parkinson’s disease
One possible Parkinson’s diet to consider is the Mediterranean diet. Named for the region around the Mediterranean Sea, this diet is heavy in fruits, grains, legumes, mushrooms, and vegetables. It tends toward using olive oil as the primary cooking fat instead of butter. Meat and dairy products aren’t emphasized, and fish and poultry are favored over red meat.
The Mediterranean diet is rich in antioxidants. Not just from fruits and vegetables, but also from sources like the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish. Antioxidants can help reduce inflammation, and inflammation appears to be connected to Parkinson’s. Including antioxidants in your diet is an easy, everyday thing you can do that might help you in living with Parkinson’s.
In animal models of neurodegenerative diseases, including an induced version of PD, a recent study found that polyphenols were effective against neuroinflammation. The Mediterranean diet is rich in polyphenols.
Another study in 2017 found that “fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, fish, olive oil, wine, coconut oil, fresh herbs, and spices” were all associated with lower rates of PD progression, with fish and plants particularly associated with the least severe cases of PD. All of those foods are key parts of the Mediterranean diet.
The MIND diet
The MIND diet is another possibility for people with Parkinson’s to pursue. Introduced by researchers at Rush University Medical Center and Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the Mediterranean-DASH Diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay is aimed at slowing the progression of cognitive decline and other mental signs of aging.
The MIND diet has some very specific guidelines about servings and food groups. As the name suggests, it incorporates features from the Mediterranean and DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets into one set of guidelines aimed at helping preserve mental acuity. Research indicates that it may be associated with better outcomes for Parkinson’s symptoms and progression.
Parkinson’s, gut health, and diet
Many people with PD experience low gut motility, the speed that your digestive tract moves and processes food. Low gut motility means that constipation is a common issue in people with Parkinson’s. It also means that a lot of people with PD experience gastroparesis, a sense of feeling overly full after eating a very small amount of food.
Fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are good for your body for a wide range of reasons. But their high fiber content is one of the biggest, and the one that helps gut motility.
General gut-health probiotics also have other benefits to the gut. Ensuring the proper balance of “good” bacteria to bad bacteria can help the GI system (and other parts of the body) in a wide variety of ways.
Many people often turn to probiotics to assist with gut motility. Keep in mind that every probiotic strain is different, and not every probiotic is intended to help with digestion. But many common probiotic strains can aid digestion by promoting gut motility. While dietary management is important on its own, consider adding a probiotic intended for digestion, as well.
Managing inflammation
Because of the inflammatory aspects of Parkinson’s disease, a lot of people turn to antioxidants for help. Research links antioxidants to anti-inflammatory effects, so it makes sense that people would connect one to the other.
Research gives mixed results about whether different dietary antioxidants help with Parkinson’s disease. By and large, they seem to help. Many antioxidants appear in lower levels in people with PD, and adding them back in generally seems to help.
For a few of them, like Vitamin C, the results are a little mixed once you move past preclinical models and into human research. But even with those, the general health benefits make it worth ensuring your diet is rich in antioxidants.
Several different strains of probiotics have also been associated with reduced inflammation in studies. There have even been studies on the effects of probiotics and inflammation in Parkinson’s. The human studies aren’t conclusive yet, but they do seem promising.
Protein and Parkinson’s
It’s important to get the right amount of protein when you have Parkinson’s. Protein is important for building and maintaining muscle mass and other important body functions. Parkinson’s is often associated with malnutrition. People with malnutrition and PD need to make sure that they get plenty of protein, which is important for the brain, among other things.
However, protein intake can also interfere with one of the most common PD treatments. In some cases, people with PD may be placed on a low-protein diet in hopes of minimizing this interference. Others adjust the timing of their protein intake relative to when they take their meds.
Levodopa uses the same transporters in the gut that protein needs. Your body breaks the protein down into amino acids, and those amino acids use the same transporters that the levodopa does when the body processes them. That means it’s important to get appropriate amounts of protein in your diet, but also to make sure that you don’t eat it at a time when it’ll be competing with the levodopa for absorption.
It also means that if you want to make the most of your levodopa, it’s best to hold off on eating a lot of protein for a little bit. You probably want to take your medication 60 minutes before you eat a meal, so that the levodopa and the protein in your meal aren’t competing with each other. Another thing to consider is that a heavy meal that is high in fat and/or calories can also delay the absorption of levodopa, also delaying its benefits.
It’s very common for people with PD to reduce the amount of protein they eat in the morning, focusing their intake on later in the day. Making dinner the largest meal you eat can be one way to deal with this.
Dopamine and Parkinson’s
One way to address your dietary management of PD is to add in a probiotic that can help promote healthy brain chemistry. Some probiotic strains, like PS128, are associated with balanced levels of serotonin and (importantly) dopamine in pre-clinical studies with mice.
We don’t have studies definitively linking PS128 to boosted dopamine in human beings. However, there is a single-arm study showing that when people with PD took PS128 in addition to levodopa, they reported more “on” time, less “off” time, and showed improved motor skills.
The same amount of PS128 used in that Parkinson’s study is available in Neuralli MP probiotic medical food, which is intended to provide dietary management for Parkinson’s disease when taken alongside regular treatment.
Foods to avoid with Parkinson’s disease
Many of the foods you should avoid when you have PD are also just foods that you should limit in general. That includes rich foods with a large amount of saturated fat. Foods that are high in saturated fats can worsen inflammation. Another potential cause of inflammation is alcohol, so if you are trying to minimize inflammation for PD purposes, you may want to avoid it.
Finally, be mindful of tyramine. Tyramine shows up in a lot of salted, cured meats and cheeses. You may be given a medication called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) to help your levodopa and dopamine last longer, but this medicine can also boost tyramine. If you get tyramine from your medication and from your diet, it can affect your blood pressure.
Hydration and Parkinson’s
Finally, make sure that you get enough water. Hydration is important for everyone, but it’s especially important for people with PD. Even mild dehydration can impair psychomotor function, memory, and even cognition.
Drinking plenty of water is critical for staying healthy for anyone, but especially people with PD. Being dehydrated can cause dizziness and low blood pressure, and can even cause trouble swallowing. This is true of dehydration in general, but since people with Parkinson’s disease often struggle with these things already, getting enough water is even more important with PD.
Keep water handy at all times, and remember that the color of your urine can be a useful indicator of hydration. The darker it gets, the more severe the dehydration.
Maintaining a healthy diet with Parkinson's
When it comes to filling your cart at the grocery store or ordering at a restaurant, it pays to make healthy choices when you have Parkinson’s. Eat lots of fruits, veggies, and whole grains, and steer clear of things that’ll cause inflammation.
Don’t forget to drink plenty of water, and make sure the timing and amount of your protein intake doesn’t interfere with your medication. You might also consider adding PS128 to your dietary management of Parkinson’s in the form of Neuralli MP.
Recommended reading:
Which Probiotics are Best for Parkinson’s?
Parkinson’s Disease, Sleep Disturbances, and Freezing of Gait - From the Science Desk
What Is the Gut-Brain Axis? How Your Microbiome Can Influence Wellbeing
