Gluten & a Parkinson's Disease Patient - Part I

Gluten Free Me with PD

After 6 years of PD I've come to the point where I realize that if I'm going to make any more progress fighting PD I'm going to need to eliminate or greatly reduce the pain I feel in my knees when I excercise, especially when I walk longer distances. I'm only at a quarter mile, I need to be able to walk a mile or two with little discomfort. Pain is a significant factor in arthritis and, of course, in Parkinson's disease.

Massage takes me part of the way, working out at the gym has taken me where I am now but I have to find a way to make more forward progress and not just hold the status quo. In recent weeks and months I've tried turmeric and nettle but the nettle seems to make me feel dizzy; possibly it lowers my blood pressure. Swimming feels great while I'm doing it, but doesn't seem to have lasting effects although I haven't been in the water as often in the last couple of months.

DynaCirc CR has helped me tremendously but I don't think I can expect it to do more. Getting a forced excercise bike probably could help me but the cost seems out of reach now. My heart condition might prevent me from getting my doctor's approval for forced exercise anyway. On the other hand, my improvement from the process of learning the semi-elliptical recumbent bike is encouraging.

I also have some some urninary tract issues which I wrote about the other day. I've been trying to deal with the UT issues first. I tried saw palmetto and pumpkin seed for my prostate, urinary frequency and sexual problems. That resulted in a slight improvement in my frequency and sexual problems but was not the answer because I had to take more than the doctor had said would be safe to get those results. So I went back to nettle. It gave me better results and I'm still using these supplements but the dizzyness and sense of shaky balance side effect were taking me in the wrong direction.

Marge had been reading about low Gluten diets and sugested I try it for 3 months to see if it helped me. The gluten-free and the low-gluten diets sounded very difficult because you can't eat bread or pasta or any food with just a trace amount of wheat - not even a bagel! But 10 years ago I was a vegetarian and I was able to stick to that diet for a few years until my cardiologist said that my triglycerides had skyrocketed and that I should probably reintroduce some meat protein to my regimen.

I had help with that diet and while I depended quite a bit on frozen items so that I wouldn't have a long wait for a meal, I also learned to make a mean vegetarian chilli. That success makes me think I'll be able to stick to this plan too. So far I've been on the diet for 10 days and I'm getting some positive results. I'll start reporting how I'm doing this weekend.

Follow up reports:

Gluten Free Part 2

Gluten Free 2 months later