Diet Debate

If Shelton was born in 1895 it is entirely possible that Shelton got Parkinson's sometime around 1917 possibly from encephalitis. They made a movie (was it Patch Adams?) about some of these patients. My grandmother had this illness and lived as an invalid several years with it. I am wondering if it is not the lack of DHA that causes Parkinson's but Parkinson's that somehow causes the low DHA. It is unlikely that most people in this country who eat the SAD are getting enough DHA and one wonders why there is not a whole lot more Parkinson's. Does a viral infection cause the inability to convert the short chain omega threes?

Perhaps Shelton's diet allowed him to live longer than he would have without it. Is there a point beyond which, with the illness, DHA would not cause improvement? Has DHA been tried with present day Parkinson's patients? My mother and also her father had a tremor which got worse over the years although they were both fully functional and only their handwriting suffered. I just noticed recently a slight tremor when I hold something lightly in my right hand, but not the left. Most people, even those on very bad diets do not get Parkinson's

A surgeon once got remarkable results with patients with severe tremors as in Parkinson's by using liquid nitrogen to freeze the part of the brain that is causing the tremors. The patient is awake during the surgery and helps the doctor locate the exact section of brain that is causing the tremors. As soon as dopamine was discovered the surgeon quit operating. Unfortunately the meds only work for so long. I am surprised that they have not gone back to the surgery.

Dolores

Dolores

DHA and present day Perkinsons patients???That would be a good test.Maybe Fuhrman has some data on that.

But,its probably why he does not recommend a low fat diet....includes flax seed and nuts.

jc, I came across a talk by Dr. Greger on you tube. I don't know how to send links but you can find it by googling 2003 Dr. Greger- Optimum Vegetarian Nutrition-Omega 3, B12 which is the you tube title. This talk is spread

out over 8 videos. He annoys the heck out of me, but the talk is very interesting. He cites studies that show that vegetarians and vegans don't live any longer than meat eaters. I believe we discussed this on another thread. To make a long story short he said that flax seed and B12 will remedy this. If you have the patience to listen to the whole thing you will probably understand it better than I. Unfortunately to go in order you have to search for the individual videos. I would be interested in what you think.

Dolores

Great link...I am watching them...will take a while to watch all of them...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88A0lWQOiGI

He seems to say we need lots of B-12 and lots of omega 3s in order to make the vegan diet healthy.I don't know about you but I'm not reaping all the wonderful benefits that I hear about on the various vegan forums like McDougall.I feel like I'm leaving something out or missing something.


The diet does control my weight, blood pressure, and blood glucose but I also have a laundry list of other problems the diet has not improved and a big list of things that have gotten worse.

I'm staying on it but with great reservations and keeping an eye on conflicting data.

jc, I found somewhere on the net, a 35 year old vegan named Natasha (I think) who is a raw food vegan. She has been vegetarian for 23 years and a raw food vegan for 4 years and coaches people in raw food veganism. Her site might be called radiant health but I am not sure. I think it is episode 321 in which she says, even against her moral beliefs she has started to add eggs and fish to her diet because she was having severe symptoms of B12 deficiency. She was getting shots and taking supplements but they weren't helping and she needed to go often for the shots. So she decided to add animal protein to her diet so she wouldn't be dependent on the shots and pills and the symptoms improved greatly. But it seems they didn't improve with the shots and pills. She said she would rather do this than be tied forever to the shots and pills even though it is against her beliefs, but her health comes first. (She is a buddhist)

The low fat gurus say that supplements will help but in her case she feels so much better eating some animal protein (no dairy or beef). She still praises veganism and says that when she switched to a vegan diet she cured her polycystic ovary disease but evidently suffered nerve damage from lack of B12. I have reservations too.

Dolores

Hi jc,

Re: I also have a laundry list of other problems the diet has not improved and a big list of things that have gotten worse.

Best of luck to you, in getting to the cause of the issues. We are all pulling for you, and we want to keep you running this site.

I don't know the issues you have, so I probably am far off the mark with any suggestions I mention. Here are a couple things I have learned of in the last few months. If they are helpful to you, I would be very pleased.

We can over-exercise. Best to have 3 days of rest between workouts with weights. Fuhrman recommends two groups of exercises, say group A of pulling, and group B of pushing exercises. Do group A on Monday, rest Tues, group B Wed, rest thurs, group A again Friday, etc. This is an 8 day cycle. I haven't tried this yet. However, I only run 2 mile on my aerobic days. I push one mile, and "smell the roses" for the other mile, even walking often. I can run one mile on a treadmill at 8.5 mph, without much problem. (It's a good treadmill, well calibrated). I kept up with a friend of mine, who is a iron man triathelon runner, running 8 miles with him. No problem, but he did charge up a steep hill along the way, and I went up slowly. Anyway, the point is that more is not necessarily better, when it comes to exercise. We aren't 20 anymore. We can exhaust ourselves. If we are exercising primarily for health, then over exercise may be prompting us to eat too much food. For example, one person is eating chicken to keep up his weight, and to support a lot of exercise. Perhaps a better plan is to reduce the exercise, cut out the chicken, and gradually increase the exercise if desired, supporting the exercise with optimal foods.

Try not to eat, and drink only water, after 6 or 7pm. I used to eat a bowl of oatmeal as a late night snack. I moved my oatmeal, from night time to right after my noon workout. WoW. It helps the workouts, and helps me sleep better. Leaner and stronger. I think this helped melt away some athersclerosis. Regardless of what happened, it seemed like I could magically run faster after doing this. Going to bed slightly hungry is very healthy.

Try tofu and sunflower seeds as an after workout muscle rebuilder. I believe I felt a difference. I eat an ounce or two of tofu daily.

Try Gentle Care supplements. Vegans occasionally are deficient on zinc, selenium, iodine, and some others. This is individual variation between people. Also, Fuhrman includes the K2 which you mentioned, to agree with your point.

I am sure you have checked you blood vitamin D level. For those reading, there is very wide variation, person to person, in how much vitamin D we need. Most people need about 2000IU, but a few need none, and a few need much more.
DHA supplements very much recommended. I used to take 3 fish oil daily, but I cut back to 1 fish oil concentrate, with 100mg DHA.

Of course, the best idea is to ask Dr. Fuhrman directly about your issues. Include a 3 day food diary. Have to join up, about $50/month, for asking questions, but less for browsing previous questions and answers. Sounds expensive, but how much does it cost for unlimited email access to your doctor?

Best regards, EngineerGuy

Thanks for the info.I am cutting back on exercise but thats hard to do for me.

Hi jc,

Best of luck. Let us know. You are super !!

Best regards, EngineerGuy

Pritikin cured his heart disease but his diet did nothing for his blood disease. Although hope springs eternal, there are so many variables involved in health that we are naive to believe diet will cure everything. A relative was 93 years old and thought his doctor was a quack because the old guy just didn't feel the same as he used to and the doc could do nothing. There is a guy on the McDougall group who commented that the diet didn't fix everything. He has high prolactin and low testosterone and will probably need meds.

My own expectation is that a plant based diet will give me an advantage should I have to be hospitalized or develop something unrelated to diet and that I will be lucky enough to avoid dementia and complications of diabetes. What I really want is to feel and look 19 again but I think that is unlikely (But who knows?)

Dolores

The vegan diet we are on is billed by TC Campbell as one which can "turn cancer off",and McDougall says it improves digestion and everyone says it will virtually eliminate cardio disease and diabetes.If the diet only fixes those things I'll be more than satisfied.

According to TC Campbell its animal protein that causes cancer especially casein and that adding or eliminating animal protein can "turn cancer on and off".That should be a very easy theory to test....put cancer patients on the diet and see if it turns their cancer off once all animal protein is removed from the diet.

First of all, having read Campbell's book, I do not see why he used casein (which is separated from the whole milk ) and concluded that all protein is equally dangerous. But I think he made a very good case against casein and peanut fungus.

In Campbell's book he gives numbers for cancer and animal protein but somewhere in there is an asterisk and the footnote says "except for fish". Now what does this mean? That fish doesn't cause cancer or that he just didn't study this?

I never knew of any society that didn't eat some animal protein if they could get it, albeit often in small amounts. I have seen films of small children in African villages turning over logs to find the juicy grubs underneath--and eating them with relish. Pritikin's famous Tarahumara did not eat an exclusively vegan diet. They trap squirells and hunt deer. The very long lived Okinawans eat some fish and a little meat. I even saw a video of a very old Okinawan woman sauteing her vegetables in oil and the narrator said they use either canola or rice oil.

I have seen a TED talk in which Dr. Li showed how foods (including olive oil) kill cancer cells--in a petri dish. There are several antiangiogenesis foods which do this--in a petri dish.

What most of these vegan cultures don't do is have 6 ounces or more of meat with every meal. Nor do they eat processed food. Most of them don't consume dairy. And they certainly never ate industrial meat.

I have chosen to eat a couple of ounces of salmon a couple of times a week. And I throw 2 ounces of minced clams into a 12 quart vat of vegetable soup that lasts practically the whole week.. On the very rare occasions when I go out, sometimes, not all the time, I will have a piece of chicken or turkey. I would have salmon but I don't eat farmed salmon.

I think a diet very heavy in plants is probably the most healthful but it arouses my suspicions when we hear the vegan only diet gurus say--take a B12 pill, take a DHA pill, take a vitamin D pill, take whatever the latest research shows you might be lacking.

Dolores

His case against protein was also the result of data from the various areas of China.He caims the numbers support a direct link between cancer and animal protein.However others like Gary Taubes and Denise M. looked at the same data and disagree.I don't know who is right but I still believe my cancer test would test Campbell's credibility....either the addition and subtraction of animal protein turns cancer on and off or it does not.