theguardian.com/lifeandstyl...
The Guardian reports that high fibre is good for health, and low carb - whilst not necessarily demanding low fibre, is a health risk for most people following the diets because of the lack of quality fibre in the diet. A bit of personal reassurance for trying to fix the microbiome with a diet which is "normal" rather than faddy.
Very interesting Winnie.
Thank you. I am one week into a keto diet and eating has become boring. I am getting real good energy from drinking butter coffee once a day. It works best for me just before lunch. Most people recommend
to drink it instead of breakfast. I am going to enjoy a good lasagna tonight.
Keto has clearly worked, or at least been part of working, for many PWP. It is fairly accepted therapy for some conditions. But it's not natural, and personally I want to try to run the machine on the fuel it was built for. Which one look at our teeth tells you includes a lot of food containing carbs.
We also need to eat vitamin C because we can't make enough ourselves (Captain Cook, limes and scurvey) and fruit is the obvious way to do it.
Watch the lasagne though. Hardly filled with fibre (although delicious occasionally). Our sons girlfriend makes an awesome vegetarian lasagne which packs a fair bit of fibre.
It depends a bit on degree. As I have posted a few times, prior to diagnosis, in my new home in France, diet had drifted towards croissant and jam for breakfast, white french bread and cheese for lunch, and plenty of pizza, lasagne and spaghetti bolognaise for dinner. (Not as bad as that - but you get the idea). By contrast, yesterday I had home made kefir and ground organic flaxseed with honey as pre-breakfast with my supplements, pineapple, banana, and home made yoghurt, a sprinkle of Jordans 4 nut crunch, with honey for breakfast, fresh vegetable soup with a couple of small slices of wholemeal toast for lunch, and then a pear, and mince beef, with swede, sweet potatoe and parsnip mash, and brocolli for dinner. There are carbs in there. There is gluten in there. There are some sugars (but not refined) in there. But there's a lot of fibre, prebiotics, and vitamins as well as probiotics in the kefir and yoghurt.
Fuel I think the machine was built to run on.
You are making me hungry. LOL
Thanks for posting the link. I have tried various diets, both pre and post PD diagnosis. Thirty years or so ago, I was vegetarian for about a year, just because my body didn't want meat. Now I eat closest to the Mediterranean diet, and do not limit good fats. Keto has too much protein for me, but I am confused with all you read out there. Beans/legumes vs. none. Starch veggies (carrots, potatoes) vs limited. I experimented with gluten-free for about 9 months last year, and am trying to get back on that wagon after the holidays, but it's difficult. Same with limiting sugars. Always interested in dietary discussions.
I experimented with gluten free. I think low sugar (refined sugar) is definitely important for me (as that article also confirmed). I now don't worry about gluten but sort of think low gluten - trying to cut out the white flour (but not to the point of declining a dish at a dinner party). That helps me ensure I have plenty of food in my diet other than white flour. Likewise Mediterranean. And I am keen on food and supplement probiotics. Beans are interesting - since we are near Castelnaudray - cassoulet capital of the world. And in a village with a reputation for its lentils. Broad beans make dopamine.... I guess cassoulet as meat (including duck) fat, and broad beans is virtually a PD prescription drug!
What probiotic supplements are you using?
I'm by the log fire using my phone after a long day. I posted about this on the thread "what is the best probiotic for pd" . Several different ones and live probiotic fermented foods. When I'm back at my pc I'll do better
from the best probiotic thread
Variety is one objective. Strain viability and preservation another. In the absence of any reliable independent reviews, there is an element of pot luck and risk spreading. So far I have tried, sequentially, not simultaneously, a Probiotic 7 from Holland and Barrett, Dr Mercola's mix and a newly released probiotic by Forever Living Products (jumping on the bandwagon). All contain the new darling L Acidophilus, L Rhamnos, B Longum and B Bifidum (I am on the lookout next for a probiotic without Bifidobactera)
Mercola and FLP have B Lactis
Mercola and Probio 7 have L Casei L Plantarum and S Thermophilus
Mercola also has L Brevis and L salivarus
Probio 7 also has B Breve
FLP also has L Reuteri
The standard (traditional) Yoghurt Bacteria are L Bulgaricus and S Thermophilus. Bulgaricus gives that sharp tangy taste. Trendy "Bio" yoghurts like Onken Biopot use L Acidophilus instead of Bulgaricus. Its smoother, sweeter tasting (and alleged to have wonder properties). Yoghurt is useless unless its live. Put a dessert spoon of yoghurt in a glass of milk (preferably whole milk) and leave in the airing cupboard overnight. In the morning, if you have a glass of yoghurt your original was live and very beneficial. If you have a glass of milk with a spoon of yoghurt in it was pasteurised or otherwise useless.
I also enjoy kefir, kombucha, sauekraut (planning to try kimchi), pickled gherkins, and unpasteurised cheeses (tons of gorgeous ones here in the Pyrennees).
L=Lactobacillus
B= Bifidabacterium
S= Streptococcus
I have another question for you Winnie, since you're a diet fan, and it's about beans. We know that the beans have a high content of dopamine, in particolare the Maior breed, but we talk about fresh broad beans. Do you know if died beans have the same characteristics? Do you consume broad beans? Cordial greetings.
I'm new to beans. Jeanette2372 posted about sprouting broad beans which looked interesting. I'm aware there is a potential issue with phylates. I read about broad beans promoting dopamine production coincidental with taking our son to Collioure on boxing Day and having a tapas meal which included a ramakin dish of fresh broad beans. Delicious, and knocked the symptoms on the head. So since we are in bean central down here I plan to work them into the diet
Sounds healthy and delicious. Where do you live in France? I’m jealous. LOL
Carol
We are about an hour south of Carcassonne. An hour west of Perpignan. Near a village famously associated with the da Vinci code
Anywhere close to chalabre? I have friends there
Half an hour away. Maybe 40 minutes. We have taken children to the chateau to play medieval games and watch real jousting. We are the village next to Rennes le Chateau along the Aude river valley. I plan to sail on lac Montbel this year if it has any water
Beautiful part of the world! When I was there lac Montbel had plenty of water.
I'm the same - get good energy from a butter coffee around midday 😊
I have more energy now then before. No mid day naps anymore. I am four weeks into using B1. Maybe it's kicking in and the butter coffee is helping also. Whatever is happening I feel great.
That's fab news. I don't have PD, my husband does, but we both have butter coffee. He takes B1 also but not sure if we've hit on the right dose yet. He's in such a lot of pain that it's difficult to gauge the Parkinson's benefits. He's been diagnosed for almost 14 years.
Interesting. It does make a good argument of the importance of fibre for general health, but not for brain health specifically. Some people have done very well on a Keto diet (which is not high protein, by the way, rather it's moderate protein) as far as their PD symptoms. My takeaway -- try to increase fibre in my diet without increasing net carbs too much.
I agree. The article, and research, was about general health and not brain health. But we need to look after our general health. I am reminded of the title of one of my favourite books about behaviour management, written by Karen Pryor, a dolphin trainer, about "Positive Reinforcement" (derived from Skinner and the ping pong playing pigeons). It was called "Don't shoot the dog". Clearly if you have a dog which barks uncontrollably and you want an effective way of changing that behaviour... No question the dog won't bark again.
Adding sufficient fibre is the key - rather than changing from a diet that works for you. The problem, I fear, is that it is not easy to get sufficient fibre from a grain avoidance diet. Not impossible - but not easy.
Certainly, yes I'm going to stick my neck out and use that word, certainly changing my diet to add fibre has utterly transformed (eliminated) my constipation, and with it I suspect and hope , improved my microbiome, which in turn is doing no harm to my PD progress
Any chance of knowing what you sons girlfriends lasanga recipe is?
goodhousekeeping.com/uk/foo...
I think Millie adds LOTS more cheese, and you can use a wholegrain lasagne
It could be that not being constipated is what the high fiber diet is fixing. This 2016 study found laxatives, some of which are just fiber, decreased rigidity over controls in PD.
It is ridiculous to equate a keto diet with a low fibre diet, you just need to get most of your fibre from leafy green veg which are high in fibre and low in carbs. Look at someone like MP Tom Watson and question whether he was in better health before his recent diet. It may not work for everyone but there are plenty (like me) who have seen real benefits. Unfortunately the keto diet flies in the face of half a century of dietary advice so there are a lot of people keen to rubbish it.
Nobody was rubbishing the keto diet. It happens to be a low carb diet - not the only one. (It is also almost certainly not a natural diet that we have evolved to eat). The research, which was extensive, found that over the long term people on low carb diets were at significantly increased risk of serious illness like heart disease and cancer. Tom Watson changed his diet last year, and is not a statistically valid large data source. My Aunt Iris lived to be over 90 smoking 40 Rothmans a day, but I don't dismiss the research that smoking is bad for your health. (Her husband, my uncle Francis, and my two grandfathers were less fortunate and conformed to the statistical norm for smokers)
The research suggested the increased health risk was not due to the low carbs per se, but that a low carb diet tended to equate to a low fibre diet, and in particular lacked fibre from grain. There are many different forms of dietary fibre, and variety is important.
Years ago my mum ate a breakfast cereal called Kellogs AllBran - which the name suggests was grain fibre, without the carbohydrate (probably with a trace of gluten) and which would be the perfect cereal to put in a Keto diet if you wanted to maintain levels of grain based fibre.
We are all free to take account of or disregard research and form our own conclusions.
Although it doesn't mention Keto by name, "popular low carb diets" is, currently, keto or keto-like by any other name.
The problem I have with this article is that it insinuates that low carb diets are inherently low in fibre. This is simply untrue.
I also can't agree that a standard diet is more natural than a keto diet. In evolutionary time scales we are still hunter gatherers. Fields of grain are a very modern invention. Potatoes are inedible without cooking. Leaves, nuts, berries, meat and fish are at the core of the ketogenic diet and would be familiar foods to people a couple of thousand years ago.
I only mentioned Tom Watson because he is well known and his transformation has been so stark. I have been on a keto diet for the last 11 months and the benefits to my health have been very real as many others have found. I am disappointed that there is so much misinformation about keto diets (that they are low in fibre, that they are high in protein etc.)
After cutting out most carbs I also had my gut biome tested and it is now very good so I will stick to my keto diet and you can stick to a high carb diet, if you prefer.
Perhaps the answer is that we are all different and one man's meat is another man's poisin.
Ketogenic Diet
Diet and PD
Keto diet good for certain medical conditions
The Mediterenian diet good for PD, MIND diet even better
Rethinking Keto
