Peripheral Levodopa - For The Brain

YOUR BODY, NOT JUST YOUR BRAIN, PRODUCES LEVODOPA!

I am starting a project I'm calling "The Peripheral Levodopa Project".

Anyone with a brain is invited to help.

Find the project blog at:

www.peripherallevodopa.blogspot.com

Amaranth, Amaranth Soda Bread

Amaranth is so nutritious that the Aztecs worshipped it and it comprised 80% of their diet. It is nutritionally complete, almost 30% protein, and gluten free. The conquistadors preferred the Aztecs worship Christ so sadly, amaranth was replaced with corn.

Because I am allergic to eggs and yeast I developed this recipe for amaranth soda bread:

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients:
- 1, 22 oz bag Bob’s Red Mill Organic Amaranth flour
- 2 Tbsp baking soda
- 1 Tbsp cream of tartar
- 1 Tbsp aluminum free double acting baking powder

Optional dry ingredients ( medicinal):
- 1-2 Tbsp organic turmeric
- 1/2-1 Tbsp organic black pepper
- 1-2 Tbsp Ceylon cinnamon
- 1 Tbsp allspice

Optional dry yummies:
- 2-4 handfuls raisins, dried berries, goji berries

Wet ingredients:
- About 18-22 oz plain whole milk Greek yogurt, or whole milk probiotic Greek yogurt, or Kefir

Optional yummy wet ingredients adding very little sugar overall:
- 2-3 Tbsp organic local honey
Or
- 2-3 Tbsp organic maple syrup
Or
- 4 Tbsp fig spread (lightly sweetened fig preserves, this also softens the bread)

 Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Select a 9”x4” non stick bread baking pan and cut a piece of parchment baking paper to slip into the pan and protect your bread from being contaminated by the aluminum of the pan.

Select a large plastic mixing bowl.

Mix together dry ingredients thoroughly using a metal whisk.

Add in optional wet ingredients, then add about 18oz yogurt. Use a sturdy wooden spoon to mix, pressing the spoon into the mixture to force the dry flour into the wet ingredients. Once the flour is mostly wetted and the mixture is mostly clumps of dough, use your hands to gather the dough into a ball, then repeatedly smash the ball, shearing the dough and folding it over reforming the ball. Do this over and over until the outer surface of the ball becomes wetted to point of being tacky to slightly sticky but mostly doesn’t stick to your fingers. If the dough is too dry add yogurt. If it is too wet add flour.

When the texture is right roll the dough into a smooth ball using the bowl, pressing  together cracks, making the surface very smooth. Then shape it into a cylinder about the length and diameter of the baking pan.

Set the dough onto the parchment paper in the pan.  Take a sharp knife and slit two lines 1/8” deep from end to end near the left and right sides of the top surface lengthwise.

Place on middle oven rack and bake it for 1 hour at 350F.  Outer surface will sound hollow when tapped. Inside will be moist.  Allow to cool an hour or even overnight.  Sliche, enjoy.

Here is some. Nutritional information on amaranth:

Packed with antioxidants:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andreas_Ebert2/publication/272356648_Amaranth_sprouts_and_microgreens_-_a_homestead_vegetable_production_option_to_enhance_food_and_nutrition_security_in_the_rural-urban_continuum/links/54e30ed20cf2c3e7d2d54ea0.pdf

Excellent source of superoxide dismutase (SOD)!:
https://www.ripublication.com/irph/ijgeb-spl/ijgebv5n1_05.pdf

So important some have tried to patent it!:
http://www.google.com/patents/US5186963

Levodopa and Dopamine Circulation Throughout The Body

Levodopa and Dopamine Circulation Throughout The Body

In reading about the kidneys’ production of dopamine, I came to realize that they produce dopamine from circulating levodopa; they do not produce their own levodopa. Where does all that levodopa come from I thought? It turns out that the mesenteric organs produce a large net amount of circulating  levodopa.

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/82/11/3864/2866142

Just like with your sinemet, or mucuna, or fava, some of that levodopa is throttled before it would reaches the brain.

I thought I’d try to make a diagram of all this.

In the diagram below I put a throttle symbol to represent that some levodopa is removed before it reaches the brain by B6 which is converted to AADC.  AADC converts the levodopa to dopamine, which mostly cannot make it through the blood brain barrier. Conversely B6 is removed from the system by the drug carbidopa.  So in a mechanical representation, Since this is done in circulation and there’s no single organ that does it, this is like a throttle, like the accelerator pedal on your car. You step on the throttle and B6 dispatches to the muscles, and out of circulation so it’s no longer converting levodopa to dopamine, And the levodopa makes it into your brain. Synthetically, if you take the drug carbidopa it destroys the B6 temporarily until you eat again, but during that window there is no B6 and the levodopa makes it to the brain. However note that in this case the B6 doesn’t go to your muscles to do it’s job there. It’s just gone in this case. 

Let off the accelerator and some of the B6 returns to circulation trimming back the levodopa that makes it to your brain.

 

So my thinking is that if we can improve the performance of the mesenteric organs and determine strategies to minimize circulating B6, we may be able to reduce or eliminate the need for medication.

 

Here’s my first attempt, comments appreciated:

This Could Be The Most Important Ongoing Study Regarding Parkinson's Disease - And You're Invited!

Dr. Laurie Mischley and Bastyr University Need Help With Their Groundbreak Parkinson's Research - Please Participate!

Participation requires each contributor to devote only one hour to completing a survey, but I can tell you Dr. Mischley and her group are learning the most comprehensive, insightful, and readily applicable information regarding what factors influence and/or mitigate the progression of Parkinson's Disease and the social health of people coping with Parkinson's.

I can also tell you that research results reported to date are helping me and many others make food, supplement, exercise, and lifestyle choices that are having tangible and immediate positive impacts on the quality of our lives.

So if you're a Person With Parkinson's please participate, especially in the next few days!:

http://bastyr.edu/research/studies/complementary-alternative-medicine-care-parkinsons-disease-cam-care-pd

Green Tomato Juice!

Green Tomato Juice!

Green tomatoes have about 1/2 the nicotine per serving as eggplant; eggplant has about 1/20th the nicotine per serving as tobacco.

As tomatoes ripen, they lose nicotine. A fully red ripe tomato has almost no nicotine.

Green tomatoes are less common, harder to find, more expensive, and more variable in character than eggplants.  Further, green tomatoes lack some of the unique nutrients of eggplant, like nasunin which chelates excess copper and iron from the brain. On balance, green tomatoes have their own unique arsenal of nutrients, like lithium, vitamin C, and lycopene to name a few.

Until now because of this mixture of factors, I have elected to juice eggplants for daily treatment of my Parkinson's.

But then it happened - a neighbor, Jae, decided to plant a massive crop of green heirlooms.

So I was generously provided a shopping bag full of gemstone grade specimens, and maybe more as nature provides.

So here was the experience of juicing green tomatoes:

1) Tomatoes washed and cut to fit down the juicer throat (Breville Juice Fountain Elite):

 2) The first 1.5 liter pitcher.

 3) Total juice from tomatoes in photo 1) about 2 liters,

 4) A plastic bottle allows 1 liter to be frozen.

 5) Hmm - I wonder if you could make sauce from this soft, wet pulp?....

Result: Taste was excellent, notes of lemon,  Symptom relief was tangible with 8 oz glass full.

Three Year Anniversary of the Book / 4-1/2 Years of Powerful Food Success

August marks the third year anniversary of my book publication. I'm still going strong after 4 1/2 years with Powerful Food. I eliminated 95% of my Parkinson's medication for 3-1/2 years. Even after a bout with vitamin D poisoning last year, I still take about 1/4 of the medication I took 4-1/2 years ago.

Recently I replaced most of the conventional medication I still take with Mucuna Pruriens  with great success!

 You can find my book at:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MEBATMW#_

Follow me on Facebook at:

https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=bookmarks

Ironman - Some Initial Obsevations On Iron And Parkinson's

More and more, metals are thought to play a role in Parkinson's disease. Recently iron has received a lot of attention in this regard. It seems that too much iron in particular too much heme or ferric iron may be especially bad. Be careful of that red meat!

This also means you should eat healthy portions of chelating foods. Broken record here but eggplant chelates iron and copper very well:

http://www.nasunin.com/health-benefits.php

I've also just learned that sweet potatoes chelate metals from your gut, especially mercury. Green tea is another good chelator. So if you eat these things on a daily basis they chelate the metals from your gut before they ever have a chance to get to your brain. But Nasunin in eggplant does cross the blood brain barrier to get the metals out of your brain.

Background

Reportedly the rate limiting factor in the production of dopamine is the cellular production of tyrosine hydroxylase.

 It says here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosine_hydroxylase

 That when Fe(III) is present, tyrosine hydroxylase is deactivated. So maybe this is the whole problem, Fe(I,II) enter the brain, accumulate, get oxidized, and subsequently deactivate the enzyme.  Perhaps the cells are not dead at all, it's just the enzyme is deactivated by the iron. Then subsequently since L-DOPA is not being produced the melanin disappears. there's got to be something we can inject in there to precipitate the iron and get it out.  then full function would be restored perhaps!

Digging a little further:

http://m.jbc.org/content/271/40/24395.full

We find our friend tetrahydrobiopterin reduces ferric (Fe+++) to (Fe++) ferrous on the TH enzyme, reactivating it: "As noted above, metal replacement studies have implicated ferrous iron as the active species in tyrosine hydroxylase. This suggests that the iron must be reduced during or before the catalytic cycle. As shown here, either dithionite or 6-methyltetrahydropterin can supply the electrons for the reduction. The physiological reductant is most likely tetrahydrobiopterin, given the ready reduction of the iron by 6-methyltetrahydropterin."

So maybe tetrahydrobiopterin could be an option. Here are some other options for reducing iron in the body I found that may be of interest:

This site had an iron-reducing cookbook it offered, and had this food for thought:

"Mismanaged iron in the brain has been observed in autopsies of people with neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer's, early onset Parkinson's, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and Huntington's disease."

http://www.hemochromatosis.org/

Here are some recent observations on of all things – therapeutic bloodletting! :

Blood letting increases serum oxidation resistance:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/7852918/

21st century bloodletting reduces cardiovascular risk

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120529211645.htm

Here's a little more thought on the topic:

Evidence conflicts on iron’s role in Parkinson’s disease

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/evidence-conflicts-irons-role-parkinsons-disease