Have you noticed that some foods such as Eggs, liver, peanuts, meat, poultry, fish, dairy foods, pasta, rice, and egg-based dishes can exacerbate your dystonia. These foods are rich sources of Choline that converts to Acetylcholine in the brain. There should be a balance between Dopamine and Acetylcholine and if not we get dystonia or our dystonia becomes severe.
As we know one way to treat dystonia is Anticholinergic drugs which inhibit cholinergic activities in the brain. Using choline increases the Acetylcholine and make your dystonia worse.
I started taking B complex vitamin that has no B6 but Choline and I noticed my dystonia that I had reduced to minimum started again so I stopped the B-Complex that includes Choline and now feel better.
Be aware of Choline!
Written by
Kia17
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"Choline is a water-soluble vitamin-like essential nutrient.[3][4][5] It is a constituent of lecithin, which is present in many plants and animal organs "
"Citicoline, also known as cytidine diphosphate-choline or cytidine 5'-diphosphocholine is an intermediate in the generation of phosphatidylcholine from choline, a major constituent of the grey matter of brain tissue (30%). Citicoline consumption promotes brain metabolism by enhancing the synthesis of acetylcholine and restoring phospholipid content in the brain, both of which positively affect memory and other brain activity."
So do you think choline should be taken and increased gradually until dystonia starts to occur, then backed off slightly, to get the balance, a bit like b1?
Excessive accumulation of acetylcholine (ACh) at the neuromuscular junctions and synapses causes symptoms of both muscarinic and nicotinic toxicity. These include cramps, increased salivation, lacrimation, muscular weakness, paralysis, muscular fasciculation, diarrhea, and blurry vision.
Thanks for posting this. The 'Neurologic Aspects' section is the one I was interested in. In 2012 my husband was prescribed Metoclopramide by his GP and was on it for 16 months! Then we had an urgent call from the GP to say he must stop taking it immediately. When I looked up the side effects & that this drug actually causes parkinsonism I was horrified as I had noticed a rapid decline in Glen's condition which the 'stand in' neurologist just put down to disease progression!
We considered starting legal proceedings but in the end it was too much stress for Glen, so we just moved on & put the whole sorry Metoclopramide episode behind us. But beware of this anti nausea drug PWPs.
Most of those sources also happen to be prime food sources of essential amino acids.
That is too bad because egg whites also have a ton of tyrosine, the precursor of phenylalanine, which actually does go across the blood-brain barrier to become the raw material to make dopamine by the cells that make dopamine.
Your change worked in your case so that is good. But reading your words, you stopped something with many ingredients, so it amounts to many simultaneous changes, not just the one choline source, because of all the other ingredients in that vitamin pill. So if there was some benefit to someone else from any of those other things, then what they gain, they lose something else. Unless now we see other people reporting the same thing, which would be great.
Do you have or know of any sources to suggest whether there is some amount of oral choline that makes a real difference, and what kind of difference it actually makes?
Also whether there is a difference in dietary choline vs. taking it in a supplement?
And for that matter, whether your improvement after stopping the B-Complex was due to stopping that one ingredient, and that one particular form of choline, and not something else?
In experiments there is something known as a "reversal," where you return to the previous state to see what happens. If you did that and your twinges came back, then returned to not using that B-complex pill, it would complete a trial of the reversal of what you did before you saw the benefit, and would imply some more that it really was that B-Complex switch, at least then that much could be of use to others (if they were taking the same formulation, since every manufacturer's formulations are slightly different in a pill with numerous ingredients). It would move along the path of being applicable for others. Not bad.
I guess Natural foods have less Choline (less side effects) than Choline supplements. I stopped taking the whole B-complex vitamin for now until I find another without B6 and Choline. That vitamin capsule has 50mg of Choline Bitartrate.
All of those foods you have listed are also rich sources of an amino acid called tyrosine which plays a critical role in the production of dopamine in the brain. healthline.com/nutrition/ho...
Restore gold has tyrosine in it. My husband has been taking that for 5 months now and is pretty stable symptom wise, but is also taking many other things too so who knows what’s helping!
If most of what he is taking falls within the category of sources of natural vitamins and minerals, rather than prescribed drugs, then I wouldn't worry too much, especially since he has found a good working combination.
Is choline the same as acetylcholine? I eat eggs every day and hamburger seems fine, but I noticed that I haven't been eating chicken for awhile and cooked a whole chicken and ate alot and wow did I get Dystonia. Tonight I had Turkey and Dystonia. That's when I realized it was chicken. I didn't know it was Asytcholine. Thank you.
I just noticed that legouminous based are in this ''how to increase Choline'' section.
Since Eggs, liver, peanuts, meat, poultry, fish, dairy foods, pasta, rice, and egg-based dishes can exacerbate your dystonia, may I ask you what you eat for breakfast? It seems like anything I ever had for breakfast was bad for me...
Life saver!! Game changer! Wow. Thank you very much for posting.
Dystonia is gone. I was trying to solve the mystery of dystonia erupting as soon as food hit the stomach. I was speculating that the gut had something to do with it. But NO. It had to be something else.
Guess what? I am a rice heavy eater OR as of two days ago, used to be! Based on the information offered in this post, I completely eliminated rice from my diet. Instant results. I also love my dairy. But I don’t want to eliminate that. Maybe it was just too much rice. Too bad that it has been my staple food for 5 decades.
This is information that no MDS is going to be able to offer us. You should put the link to the article in your main post. I have linked it here also.
Together with several B-vitamins (i.e., folate, vitamin B12, vitamin B6, and riboflavin), choline is required for the metabolism of nucleic acids and amino acids, and for the generation of the universal methyl group donor, S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) (see Figure 4 above). SAM is synthesized from the essential amino acid, methionine. Three molecules of SAM are required for the methylation reaction that converts phosphatidylethanolamine into phosphatidylcholine (see Figure 2 above). Once SAM donates a methyl group it becomes S-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), which is then metabolized to homocysteine. Homocysteine can be converted back to methionine in a reaction catalyzed by vitamin B12-dependent methionine synthase, which requires 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-meTHF) as a methyl donor. Alternately, betaine (a metabolite of choline) is used as the methyl donor for the methylation of homocysteine to methionine by the enzyme, betaine-homocysteine methyltransferase (BHMT) (1). Homocysteine can also be metabolized to cysteine via the vitamin B6-dependent transsulfuration pathway (see Figure 4 above).
Thus, the human requirement for choline is especially influenced by the relationship between choline and other methyl group donors such as folate and S-adenosylmethionine. A low intake of folate leads to an increased demand for choline-derived metabolite, betaine. Moreover, the de novo synthesis of phosphatidylcholine is not sufficient to maintain adequate choline nutritional status when dietary intakes of folate and choline are low .Conversely, the demand for folate is increased when dietary supply for choline is limited.
I waited to take my morning 2 Cardopa/levadopa until 10:20 am, felt great, besides tremor went in yard and did fast walking laps, left leg was not stiff and right leg was ok,walked for an hour. Then right leg felt weak and slight Dystonia and gave out. So I took my pills. I have eaten yet, I took 1 Alpha lipoic it's supposed to help reduce choline, and which was on the video from Kia17. So it must be a inbalance of dopamine/choline. My left leg which pd started is not effected only my right now. I have changed my diet no more gluten, trying to eat the Ancestral diet. Also two days ago I took 800 ml B1, Curcumin wich has choline, so I'm not gonna use that, vit c, ashwagandha, and for some reason when I drink green tea on empty stomach makes me feel nauseous. Well I ended up getting sick, I was hunger and dizzy, so I gave in and my husband made toast with jam, And I ate saltines. I had diarrhea and got sick 4 times. Slept all day and had stomach cramps, gas for two days.
I'm confused. I been trying to figure out what I should and shouldn't do to try and improve Parkinson's and dystonia symptoms. In my case, Parkinson's begin as primarily tremors but now bradykinesea and leg dystonia has kicked in. I eat eggs and meat every day for instance. Is this bad for dystonia?
It’s not that simple. I have just shared my personal experience not scientific facts but in overall if we balance between neurotransmitters we might be able to deal with symptoms. I still experience dystonia, stifness and Bradykinesia but with low degrees.
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