It seems to be a given on PD pages that PwP cut out dairy. Or does it just seem that way because the only mention of dairy is to cut dairy?
I have not been diagnosed with PD. I have been diagnosed with RBD (and my left arm and shoulder and left leg are coincidentally always somewhat sore).
I follow the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that is used to treat IBD because this diet has been shown in a couple of papers to normalize the microbiome. With the SCD you can have some cheeses. Basically hard cheeses. I'd like to keep eating my Parmesan and Cheddar.
I see the Mediterranean diet allows some cheese. Wahls = No. Anti-Inflammation Diet allows some cheese (depending on who you ask I think).
Is everybody off cheese?
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Bolt_Upright
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To the best of my knowledge, full fat cheese is ok, for the most part. Kerry Gold butter is ok as well. most heavy cream, and ghee, too. What you want to avoid are milk and milk products such as yogurt, regular butter, ice cream, things with lactose.
My friend, once you fry some eggs in Kerry Gold you'll never want to use regular butter again! They also make a seasoned, garlicy butter that is fantastic as well. Great for eggs and on vegetables or fish!
Gotta love that Kerri Gold butter. I bake all of our bread, and of course my favorite part is slathering Kerri Gold all over a slice fresh from the oven.
Actually, that was a bit of a lazy short comment. Yoghurt is made by lactobacilli fermenting the lactose in milk into lactic acid. It contains much lower levels of lactose which are much better digested, and almost never cause a problem for those with lactose intolerance.
Haha I was wondering what "regular butter" was, looked up the ingredients in Kerry Gold and figured that's what we here in NZ call butter. It's made of cream and salt. What on earth do you americans have in what you are referring to as regular butter?
Great question. Kerry gold uses cream from grass fed cows whereas regular butter comes from grain fed cows. Makes a big difference . Note that a cow is not adapted to eat grain and corn. It's very harmful to them. They are evolved to eat grasses.
Once a 'manure digester' was built to convert manure into electricity, the formerly pastured cows were taken inside and their pastures converted into corn fields for silage. It wouldn't surprise me if this is becoming more the 'norm' in the US.
I love cheese and no, at least one of us is not off dairy. We all can take everything so seriously it is easy to forget that some things are worth it and you adjust by learning your priorities, which are also allowed to shift as circumstances and feelings do... With as many variables as life's experience brings and situations vary with the wind, it's a movable feast and values shift and shift back, only to shift some more this way and that.
And what people say about lactose is true and so incorporate that into the overall balance. There are tons of lactose-free products on the market now, expanding your choices. Any opportunity to dilute preoccupations is a good thing, so take advantage of them and preoccupy yourself not.
I commented last year that there is more than one sort of wheelchair that PD can put you in. And obsessively giving up all the things you enjoy in life is one of those wheelchairs
I would encourage people to experiment and try completely avoiding things like dairy, wheat, sugar or processed food for 4 to 6 weeks or even more , just to see if it makes them feel better or not. This way, at least you know. Then you can decide if it's worth giving up the pleasure and convenience of eating these things. Slightly on the subject, I had a thought that if I ever become suicidal, I'm going to off myself by eating a really really bad but fun diet, smoke Marlboros, spend all my savings and really let it all go. This should give me a fatal cardiovascular event rather quickly! And who knows? Maybe it would bring me so much joy that my supposed suicidal ideation would resolve itself anyway. (Note: I am not actually suicidal so don't worry about it. And I don't want to belittle anyone who is because I know that is some serious shit.)
There are about 10 million people with PD in the world. Figure the percentage of them that are on this forum. Then active on this forum. Then active and avoiding Dairy.It's easy to get fooled into thinking that this handful of people are the real world. Actually, recently you could be forgiven for thinking this forum was a personal blog for Bolt Upright. Thank you for letting me post on it 😊
It pays to get out more.
The nearest there is to anything approaching evidence of dairy being a problem in PD is Laurie Mischleys survey. And that makes no attempt to analyse confounding factors (do people eating a lot of dairy eat no vegetables? For example)
It is also largely American. And I have read PD posts promoting "grass fed dairy". So maybe the problem is the growth hormones and antibiotics that America allows in its dairy food chain, that are banned here in Europe, that are the problem.
I eat cheese. I had a great pizza yesterday in an awesome surf bar on the French Atlantic Coast (which I cycled 15km to)
Here in France we get cheese made from "lait cru" (unpasteurised milk) which is a great natural probiotic
The American Problem hiding in the wings is sugar. Screws up everything and nobody remembers because it tastes so good, like all heavily addictive substances. Sugar messes up your triglycerides. Sugar is the hiding devil.
We’re not off cheese or dairy and don’t cut it out of our diet. My husband loves dolcelatte blue cheese, amongst others, doesn’t eat it every day but not avoiding it either.
I used to work for a dairy business (ice cream manufacturer). There is the same amount of sugar per litre in semi - skimmed or skimmed milk as whole milk - about 50g per litre. There is the same amount of water (near enough). Sugar represents a higher percentage of the non-water content of skimmed milk but there is the same amount of sugar in a glass of full fat milk as there is in skimmed milk
Ok. It definitely tastes sweeter. I suppose the difference in water where there is 0.1% or 4% fat makes not much difference. I still can’t stand low fat milk in tea or coffee due to the sweetness.
Nope. I eat tons of cheese and go through a gallon of milk every couple days. I've never seen anything other than anecdotal evidence that lactose (or gluten, btw) is "bad" for PWPs in general. Of course, those who cannot digest lactose or who have celiac disease should avoid these nutrients like the plague, but those are specific medical conditions that are distinct from Parkinson's.
Thanks PB,Appreciate the study you found, but there is always the fat vs sugar debate for heart and general health. I think my Dad had it right when he told us, everything in moderation.
If you were to give up just one thing, I would choose sugar. I surprised myself and went cold turkey. Of course, sugar is hidden and in most foods but I just do the best I can and I cheat occasionally. I know my present diet has helped me in many ways and I wouldn’t change now because I feel so much better. Diet needs to be considered when dealing with health. A functional approach to health is the future.
To me it is a toss-up between sugar and carrageenan. But then again, we rarely eat anything with sugar. Carrageenan is what is used when they want to test if pharmaceuticals reduce inflammation... and it is in SO MANY store-bought products, like salad dressing.
It's not (only) milk sugars that may cause problems, but also milk proteins (casein in dairy products).The body itself makes endorphines, to set free for instance dopamine and serotonine.
Exorphines in your food - in gluten, dairy (casein), soy, spinach - are morphine-like substances. That is why you love these products so much.
Exorphines use the same receptors in the brain as endorphines.
When eating a lot of exorphines you may create endorphine-resistance: receptors become insensitive. By this mechanism your endorphine-system gets problems to set free dopamine and serotonine.
You can give it a try for some weeks or months to ban exorphines from your diet, and see what happens.
(If you have a dinner at friends and you don 't want to bother them, have a capsule of DPP-IV. That's an enzyme for digesting exorphines).
Wouldn't the enzyme make their properties even more available? (increases thorough digestion rather than the possibility that some passes through undigested?)
Because of Dr. Michley’s study, I have cut way back on dairy. I only have cheese once in awhile if I am eating out. I don’t want to be that person that no one wants to hang out with because I can’t eat anything. I made a creamy enchilada sauce last night with homemade cashew crema and it was delicious. I am finding I really don’t miss cheese, butter or cream.
As usual reading pages of posts leaves me with a headache but no answer. Is lactose the root problem? I developed lactose intolerance abruptly at age 18. I had a quart of milk for lunch one day. Then later that day I started rattling the windows with loud, booming gas. It seemed to go on for hours. When I left the restroom I found the house empty. Everyone was down the street using newspapers as fans. 50 years later I still don't drink milk. But I like cheese and crackers and don't have gas problems with it.
As you saw my post on the AID for IBS diet (a version of SCD) you might guess I am sticking with cheese. No milk for me. I don't need a doctor to tell me that milk does not agree with me. I am not giving up sour cream either, based on that report I found that fermented dairy is either less inflammatory or not inflammatory.
I think it may be more nuanced. Aged cheese is allowed on anti-inflammatory diets and Wahls. I posted about maybe even Sour Cream being okay yesterday. It might be. At least it might not be inflammatory.
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