Oh, you sweet thing. SUGAR.

[Thal]

Recently researchers have reported a curious association between Parkinson’s and sugar: People with Parkinson’s consume more sugar.

scienceofparkinsons.com/202...

[LindaP50]

My husband eats sweets on a daily basis. Mostly in the evening after dinner. Usually cookies. Yet in the last few months around 3pm will ask for some cookies and milk, or ice cream or some other sweet. Because he doesn't walk very well he's gaining weight.

He's always been a person who had bowel movements about 2 to 3 times a week. Now, he goes once every day or every other day. I suggested he lay off the sugar. He hasn't agreed with me yet. I will keep working on him. If not successful, I'll have to dig out my few recipes on keto chocolate cake, etc.

[Thal in reply to LindaP50]

How's his teeth for cavities?

[kaypeeoh]

The report connects sugar to glycation. That's sugar and proteins acting together. If that's the whole problem a keto diet would have cured the disease eons ago. In ketosis the body is using fatty acids to run the Krebs cycle in mitochondria. If you cut out carbs it happens naturally.

I tried the Atkins Diet years ago. I monitored urine ketones daily. There are some athletes who do well in ketosis. I'm not one of them. In ketosis I had trouble running. My legs, back and neck would cramp miserably. For me a middle-ground might be training in ketosis but racing with a lot of sugar on board.

But getting back to the point, I'm definitely a carbaholic and have been since I was 5 or 6yrs old. That's when I had nine baby teeth pulled. I never knew why I had to go through all of that. Ever since I've been manic about my teeth. I floss, then brush with two different pastes, then gargle again, then floss again.

I'm 66 still have all my adult teeth except the molar that I lost when a horse kicked me in the face.

[Thal in reply to kaypeeoh]

Unprocessed carbs are probably ok but according to Dr Lustig it's the added sugar that's toxic.youtu.be/We9JLi4A-lE(Not working as expected?)

[akgirlsrock]

Sugar revs up my tremors and I had pasta tonight which I haven't had in a while tremors stronger and I feel stiffness . I do best on grass fed burger and some veggies.

[MarionP]

Sugar makes me itch like crazy, serious intense pruritus all around the body including inside my trachea believe it or not, only relieved by a complete cessation of sugar combined with use of antihistamines, needing both oral and topical. If for some reason I have ingested protein before sugars, there is less of the problem effect.

The same thing happens when I use any product containing the sweetener aspartame.

It's like suddenly being lit on fire...in my lungs and trachea it's expressed as a vigorous itch and unquenchable cough tickle. The only thing that stops that is the well-known cough syrup dextro methorphan, which also just so happens to be an antihistamine.

This leads me to hypothesize that there is a sensitivity to stimulation along the aspartic activating pathway, perhaps similarly involving glutamate, and that sugar / glycation activates it somehow. For some people anyway.

Have had it all my life. The only way to think of it is as a sugar allergy, probably came by it through two factors... First was heredity on my mother's side, perhaps thru certain genes mutations, and the second was overexposure to sugars as a young child.

The reason I mention mutation is because anything that's stimulates gaba is supposed thereby through that gaba to inhibit neural excitation, not stimulate it, GABA is a calming hormone... But in my case it inflames all my histamine cells or at least all my H1 cells, which suggests something of a paradoxical reaction to what you would suspect is supposed to be a normal calming neuro inhibitory effect... But GABA is not a complete inhibitor (I used to call it nature's brake fluid), GABA does act on the parasympathetic nervous system, which does not have a complete set of calm down circuits corresponding to the sympathetic nervous system (the sympathetic is the famous fight or flight never activating system, the parasympathetic system is a corresponding calm down system that is supposed to take over once the threat is gone). So much of my speculation is to what causes what is really incomplete and could be quite wrong because it may not take into account multiple effects. But thinking allergy isn't a bad start, because going back to what started this whole conversation was Kainate receptors and their ion pathways, which all has to do with, guess what, lithium and the associated protein kinases involved. And interestingly enough, talking about antihistamines might seem more relevant than not, because the very strongest antihistamines are also antipsychotics, such as the most famous early example, which was thorazine. The early abusable stimulant drug Benzedrine was another.

Anyway, whoever said sugar is evil was not far wrong.

[2bats]

I was a complete Carboholic throughout my life, eating prodigious quantities of carbohydrates and particularly fructose in the mistaken belief that it was good for me. I never put any weight on because I played squash flat out eight times a week and thought I was super fit until I got the tremor in 2009. Having seen the light I’m now on a carnivore diet to keep inflammation to a minimum and slow the progression of my Parkinson’s Disease. I regard sugar and carbohydrates in general as toxic waste!

[amykp]

I always sound crazy I know but I'm absolutely convinced sugar is terrible for PWP... and it's so weird that everyone craves it! Why?

I'm with 2Bats. Well, actually, I eat green vegetables and nuts and dairy so I guess it's not a carnivore diet. But I keep my carbohydrates under 30 grams a day, no cheating.