Juice Fasting with Parkinson's Disease

Ok, that was hard and weird.  I did not make it the full three days. I did two days, and ate a couple of Avocados and Bananas during the fast as well, so not sure how much of a "fast" it actually was.  I'm a big guy (about 210 lbs) so, I get hungry.  Also, as my wife noted, I'm a snacker, so it took a lot to just get through those two days.

Nevertheless, I'm happy I did it because of what I noticed.  During the fast, especially the second day and the third day during which I actually did eat a bit, I noticed my meds were working really well and I seemed to be staying on longer.  In fact, yesterday (day 3), I extended my meds (Sinemet) so long, that I actually took only 8 pills instead of 9 during the day, and the last two were taken at least two hours after I would normally take my last dosage of the day.

So, the question is, what was this doing to my system that I could extend my meds for much longer periods of time.  A couple things come to mind.

1. Sinemet does not work well with protein, and the juice fast pretty much eliminates most proteins from your diet, at least proteins from animal sources.  The fact I was eating a lot less protein may have contributed to the effectiveness of my meds.  One caveat is that my wife is vegetarian, and we rarely eat meat in the house,. so unless it's dairy or soy, I don't get a lot of protein on a daily basis anyways.
2. Ridding my body of toxic food helped me reset some of my synapses and effectively improved my reactions to my medications.  This one is a who knows?
3. Similar to number 2, but coming from the opposite end, eating a lot of fruits and vegetables in the form of juice helps your body absorb and use the medications more effectively.  I mean the amount of fruits and vegetables I ate in those two days was huge, compared any other day, hell week, over the past couple of years.

While, I have no evidence other then basically how I felt and what my reactions were, it gives me somewhere /something to look into further.  I plan no trying to just skip a few meals a week next week during working hours and drink juices instead.  I want to see if that will have a similar effect on my med schedule and general overall well being.  Other than being hungry and missing the act of eating, I'd say it was pretty successful and I look forward to some more self-experimentation.

One note:  I am not a doctor, I am not recommending this to anyone.  If you do begin a fast, note that you probably should see your doctor before hand.  Nevertheless, if you do try it, please let me know how it went and what if any observations you make.

Day 1 of 3 day Juice Fast

I am finally going to do a juice fast for three days.  I'm doing three days because I figure it's long enough to show some results without going crazy.  I'll report on how I'm doing and what I'm feeling.  I will probably not be giving up caffeine these next few days, so I'll be drinking a few cups of coffee as well.

This morning's juice:

• 1  Bunch of Kale
• 1 Large Cucumber
• 1 Head of Romaine Lettuce
• 1 Green Apple
• 1 Anjou Pear
• 2 Red Apples

Hopefully, this will get me through a lot of the day, as I'm at work and don't have the ability to juice much more.  I'll go down to the cart and grab a Naked Juice or something similar if I run out and need some more nourishment by the end of the day.

Wish me luck.

Bought a Juicer

I bought a juicer to try to increase my vegetable intake and try to improve my diet.  I've experimented a bit, but I have to say, so far this is my favorite juice.

• 8 carrots (ends removed) 
• 2 Granny Smith Apples
• 2 Red Apples 

I juiced them in that order, poured it into a glass and added some ice.  DELICIOUS!  The basics of the recipe came from here.  I need to find some good green vegetable juices.  If you have any, please point me to them in the comments.

Young Onset Parkinson's Conference recap

On Friday, June 15 and Saturday, June 16, I went to the Young Onset Parkinson's Conference in Irvine, CA.  I have actually never been to a conference related to Parkinson's and have not met personally with any Young Onset patients.  The main themes I got from the conference were exercise, eating healthy and taking control of your own care.

I arrived at 3:00 pm in Irvine after driving up from San Diego.  I registered and sat down at an empty table in back by myself.  All of a sudden another gentleman sat down next to me and introduced himself as John Ball.  I was shocked, excited and inspired as I had read John Ball's book, Living Well, Running Hard: Lessons Learned from Living with Parkinson's, a few years ago.  I immediately told him I knew who he was, read his book, and regretted I did not have it with me for him to sign.  If you do not know who John Ball is, he was diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson's at age 39 after dealing with symptoms for ten years previous to that.  Since he turned 51, he has run upwards of 29 marathons and one ultra-marathon.  He is now in his upper 60s and still runs and this past year, his foundation Team-Parkinson, raised over $175k at the LA marathon.

Needless to say, I had not even heard the first speaker and was already psyched and enjoying the conference.  I found the speeches for the most part interesting, but what I really appreciated most was talking with other people who were going through similar issues as me.  I met many people who were in there 40s or who had been symptomatic since their 30s and 40s.  We discussed family, medication strategies, diet and exercise.  It was amazing to hear how many people were working out four to six times per week.  Also, I found people who had seen the benefits of adjusting their diets and the effect on their medication effectiveness.

People were from all walks of life.  Some were still working and had young children like myself while others were retired or working in new careers that had opened up to them as a result of their diagnosis and life situation.  However, one thing was very clear, those who were exercising, watching their diet and managing their disease the best in terms of understanding their med schedule and how everything effected it seemed to be doing the best.  You could tell they had better attitudes and had not let their disease take over their lives.  Instead, they were managing their disease and living their lives to the fullest.

I will definitely be gong to more of these conferences and will start attending the Young Onset support group in San Diego as that was another strategy that I saw many people using.  There really is nothing like talking to other people who get what you and your family is dealing with.


I'll leave you with some interesting notes and sayings I took from the other talks:

• With respect to exercising: What fits your busy schedule better, exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?
• Mediterranean diet may help prevent Parkinson's and reduce symptoms.
• Guided imagery reduced tremor significantly.  Stress increases tremor.
• Important factors in Exercise - Intensity, Specificity, Difficulty and Complexity
• Keep yourself learning
• High intensity exercise with correct form showed significant improvement in gait 
• What exercises are better:  Skill base vs aerobic
• Dr Petzinger believes more important to do skill based training
• Any practice where learning is involved is important
• When shuffling stop and step off with less freezing leg
• New therapies on the horizon:
• Categories: 
• Disease modification - no meaningful treatments yet, but a bunch on horizon
• Symptoms - dopa responsive and non-motor based
• Drugs:
• Isradipine - protects neurons in mouse models, blocks l-type calcium channels, yet dopamine cells are not the only important ones.  
• People who take the drug as anti-hypertension drug lower risk at getting PD unlike other anti-hypertension drugs.  
• Give isradipine to fish it chews up alpha-synnuclein
• 60 patients and 60 controls, results are out next week so watch for it.
• Urate and PD, high levels (folks with gout) have lower risk of PD.   People with higher irate levels showed slower progression of the disease.  Fox foundation doing study with trial that will be done in 6 months.
• Other drugs include:
• Disrupting protein aggregation:  inhibition of alpha-synnuclein
• Pump drugs:
• Duodopa
• Apomorphine
• Gene therapy:
• GABA
• Neuterin
• Enrollment for clinical trials is major issue

I think it's working

The diet change seems to be helping. I don't know if it's psychosomatic, or actually real. However, I have noticed that since I stopped snacking on sugary treats during the day and reduced my protein intake, my symptoms are not as pronounced as they were. I seem to have less off time, and my meds seem to kick in a faster than they did.

It didn't help that my mom came into town toting a brisket for the family (since the wife is vegetarian and does most of the cooking, my kids and I love when Grandma brings a brisket over). However, she will probably not continue bringing them cross-country. I told her about my food experiment and she basically said she wasn't bringing it anymore. I still had an occasional sweet, usually at night before bed and when I wasn't concerned about my gait or tremor as much because everyone was asleep. However, I cut out all the juice I was drinking and non-diet soda. I had previously tried not drinking diet-soda and would have juice or Sprite instead, but that did not seem to have any impact. It's only been a week, but it's a rare positive in a recent sea of negatives, so I'm hopeful.

Thanks to those who tweeted in response to my previous post. It's good to hear from people both in comments (I have none so far) and via twitter.

 Warning about twitter - I am very liberal, even more so than when I was in my 20s and 30s. Life usually pushes you one way or the other. So, if that doesn't float your boat, that's ok. Ignore those posts.

There's something in the food

I am totally convinced that there is an element of my symptoms that is exacerbated by what I eat. I just don't know what it is that is triggering it. I mentioned in my first post, that I believe high levels of protein make me feel worse. However, even when I don't have much protein during the day (it helps being married to a vegetarian), I still get periods where I'm just not doing well.

What is not doing well? I feel I'm not doing well if I don't see profound change for the good in my gait and tremor forty five minutes to an hour after I've taken my medication (all of them in the morning after waking up, and one Sinemet later in the day.

Some of the things I've tried over the past few years included giving up caffeine altogether, giving up diet soda, giving up all soda, etc. The newest thing I just started trying is to give up all sugary snacks, treats, drinks and condiments. I started this morning and have been doing well so far (yet, it's not even noon yet). I'll probably try this for a few days and then report back. However, this will be hard given my propensity for sweets and it doesn't help that the wife makes cookies with the kids every week as an activity.

As an aside, this whole giving up sugar idea reminded me of this.