by Katie Joll

Acting out vivid dreams. Yelling during sleep. Flailing around and hitting the headboard. Rick had been doing these things during sleep for over 10 years, but what was happening?

We met Rick, a retired lawyer from Evans, Georgia, after he’d spent considerable time researching his condition and consulting with doctors. His textbook case of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) was grim news - the condition is strongly linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia.

An avid researcher, Rick proactively looked for anything he could do to improve his health. Read on for his story about discovering Neuralli MP and how this probiotic medical food helped improve his quality of life.

Disclaimers: This article describes one person's experience with Neuralli MP. Neuralli MP is a probiotic medical food for the dietary management Parkinson's disease alongside standard therapies. Neuralli MP contains the gut-brain probiotic PS128 which has been tested in one single-arm study of Parkinson's disease patients. PS128 has not been studied in people with REM Sleep Behavior Disorder or people with a loss of the ability to smell. Bened Life makes no claims about Neuralli MP's effects on people with these symptoms. Neuralli MP is not a drug. Consistent with the Healthcare Nutrition Council's statement, a medical food can provide clinically meaningful improvements. The stated opinions of Rick are his alone and not Bened Life's.

“For 10 or 11 years, I've had episodes of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder,” says Rick. “I didn't know what it was. Acting out dreams, flailing about, hitting the headboard, hitting my wife, kicking, yelling, very vivid, disturbing dreams and acting out in response to that.”

“I finally needed to look it up. So I got on the internet and did some research. There's gotta be a name for it. And indeed there is; it's REM Sleep Behavior Disorder.”

Many people experience sleep disturbances, but RBD is a particularly pernicious condition that directly links with serious neurodegenerative conditions. Concerned with what he learned when he researched RBD, Rick had his condition confirmed with a sleep doctor, then decided to look further - did he have other symptoms that could point to a medical condition?

“I came back and started researching Parkinson's,” Rick says. “What are other signs and symptoms that would be coexisting at an early stage of the disease? And things that I had overlooked before as probably just normal signs of aging or had just kinda written off…”

Rick describes some of the symptoms: “Things like loss of sense of smell. Very common. I didn't know that. I just knew that I didn't smell things the way I used to. Didn't really smell food, cooking, etcetera. Didn't smell things outdoors, but I thought, oh, okay, I'm in my sixties. Maybe that happens. Getting dizzy when you stand up, you know, because of the drop of blood pressure…maybe that happens.”

“But when you put it all together, it points in one direction, in one direction only,” says Rick. Parkinson’s. “Then I made an appointment with a neurologist.”

Rick isn’t one to sit back and wait for suggestions - he was ready to take a proactive approach to his health and set his research skills to the task. “I guess kind of by virtue, through the miracle of the Internet, this ad started showing up from Neuralli,” Rick says.

As a careful researcher, Rick didn’t jump on Neuralli right away. “I kept seeing this ad, and I even researched Neuralli Probiotic Parkinson's scam to see if I got any hits, and I didn't,” says Rick.

Neuralli MP is a probiotic medical food containing the PS128 strain, and is formulated to meet the unique nutritional needs of people with neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s and ASD. PS128 appears to affect the gut microbiome-to-brain signaling that can be disrupted in these gut-brain conditions, and PS128 cannot be obtained in the diet.

Study participants with Parkinson’s reported significant improvements in motor symptoms and improved quality of life while taking PS128 along with their usual anti-Parkinsonian medication.

Rick decided to take the leap. “I said, you know, it is worth a try. The gut-brain axis connection with Parkinson's, my research had made that very clear that this is the cutting edge of thought in Parkinson's disease,” he says.

Emerging research suggests a strong link between the gut microbiome and the development of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world, with someone diagnosed in the United States every nine minutes.

While scientists are still piecing together the exact ways the gut microbiome influences the brain and the development of neurodegenerative conditions, they’ve made some fascinating discoveries. For example, researchers have found that early Parkinson’s symptoms can include dysfunction of the gut and that those symptoms can precede the onset of Parkinson’s by decades.

Rick says, “The connection seems to be just too clear and a possible avenue for prevention down the line and helping [with] some some of the symptoms that we deal with Parkinson's. So I started taking it to see what would happen.”*

Around 10 to 11 days into taking Neuralli MP, Rick had a startling revelation. “I go walking every morning and got up and started walking down the street from our neighborhood to the park, and I smelled a pine tree,” he says.

“I smelled them and I don't know that I'd ever smelled them before. Not for a long time, and I was struck by that. I could smell the grass, wet dirt, asphalt, bushes, things I had not been able to smell in an incredibly long period of time.”*

It was an emotional moment for Rick. “I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and the only thing that was different, it was that I was taking this probiotic,” he says. “I came home, got changed, came out. I could smell breakfast cooking and coffee brewing. I haven't smelled that in years! I was giddy; I mean, it was really something!”*

Rick committed to at least trying Neuralli MP for three months to see how much of a difference it might make. Besides his newly-found sense of smell, he noticed other changes, too.

“I'm not nearly as dizzy or lightheaded when I stand up. I mean, before, I would stand up and have to grab hold of something for a few seconds just to stabilize. I don't have to do that anymore,”* says Rick.

“The REM sleep behavior has diminished. I don't remember having violent dreams and episodes*. There's some occasional vocalization in my sleep. You know, basically just gibberish… but nothing like it was before. And I'm not on any Parkinson's medication. I take no multivitamins, etc. But there's only one thing that was different between then and now, and that's the Neuralli,” he says.

“From my perspective, with these prodromal symptoms of Parkinson's, it (Neuralli) makes a tremendous difference.”*

Neuralli MP is now part of Rick’s everyday routine. He isn’t on any medications for Parkinson’s, but he does maintain close contact with his neurologist to monitor his condition. “My neurologist is well aware of the fact that I am taking Neuralli and heartily approves,” he says.

For anyone with early-stage Parkinson’s, Rick encourages them to consult with their own physicians and consider trying Neuralli MP. “The first steps that someone should take, if they're totally unfamiliar at all with Parkinson's research and the gut-brain axis, they should start there and start doing some basic research. So with that basic knowledge, maybe if I change the bacteria, my microbiome in my gut, this can have an impact on my day-to-day life.”

Rick understands that some people may be skeptical. “I understand folks' reluctance,” he says. “That's why I researched, 'internet probiotic Parkinson's scam.' I mean, I researched those words, kind of half expecting to get a hit. It didn't! I was skeptical too. I tried it, and … improved and stayed improved down the line. I committed to a three-month trial, and I would recommend that to anybody, just to see what happens.”

“You take it once a day… and that's it. And it has made this huge difference in my life.”

*Disclaimers: This article describes one person's experience with Neuralli MP. Neuralli MP is a probiotic medical food for the dietary management Parkinson's disease alongside standard therapies. Neuralli MP contains the gut-brain probiotic PS128 which has been tested in one single-arm study of Parkinson's disease patients. PS128 has not been studied in people with REM Sleep Behavior Disorder or people with a loss of the ability to smell. Bened Life makes no claims about Neuralli's effects on people with these symptoms. Neuralli MP is not a drug. Consistent with the Healthcare Nutrition Council's statement, a medical food can provide clinically meaningful improvements. The stated opinions of Rick are his alone and not Bened Life's.