My Parkinson's Disease and a Gluten-Free Diet: How I'm Doing

2 Months Gluten-Free with PD

It's been 2 months now since I stopped eating foods containing gluten, and while there have not been any block buster cures of major symptoms, in a general way I do feel better.

For financial reasons I've had to cut my massage from 4 times a month to 2 sessions. My range of motion and lack of rigidity and stiffness have remain improved, especially in my more affected left arm and hand and shoulder. This may be helped because I am now taking creatine and CoQ10 together. My feeling is that there is a help on several fronts but that the gluten-free diet has facilitated the good results.

Some of my allergy symptoms have gone away or decreased. I went the gamut of runny nose, sneezing, coughing, breathing difficulty from clogged airways and being repeatedly asked by you-know-who to clear my throat when speaking. Okay, I really didn't pay that much attention to it but I did take Claritin often so that I wouldn't have to think about the allergy signs. I can't remember  the last time I struggled to extricate one of those tiny pills from its blister-type packaging. While I still have occasional post nasal drip, it's no big deal - I'm in northeast Ohio. 

I still am experiencing some urinary frequency but am only having to get up 2 times during the nights compared to 4 or 5 before. Now I go to bed at 11:00 pm and wake around 1:00am and again at 4:00am, I dream more and have fewer illusions (left over from Mirapex). No vivid dreams at all.

Sexually I feel better because I can feel more and I stay harder longer. I just started taking the pycnogenol and L-arginine pills I had ignored for a year. I am taking this combination for the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant properties and find that it helps sexual dysfunction also. As a matter of fact this particular little blue pill is marketed just for that reason.

Everyone knows that I worried about keeping the comfort foods. Just the other morning I facetiously told Marge that I wanted french toast for breakfast. And about 20 minutes later there it was. Rice bread lends itself well to french toast. Gluten-free cheese puffs and chocolate chip cookies (from bean flours) are great snacks when I'm not having fruit. Tonight we'll have spaghetti from brown rice pasta. A new favorite is refried beans mixed with a spicy salsa and gluten-free turkey sausage.

I think the diet has helped me get my constipation problems under control. I am regular now and it doesn't take a whole day or two to get there.

Staying on the diet isn't too hard, not as hard as stopping smoking which I did almost 30 years ago. And I seem to have a better frame of mind.

Finding the Best Price for CoQ10 for Parkinson's Disease

Shopping for CoQ10 - Ubiquinone - Ubidecarenone
Coenzyme Q - Coenzyme Q10
As you may know, we've been buying the anti-oxidant CoQ10 at Costco for the last few years. They carried TruNature made using the trans isomer (natural) process and appeared to be one of the least expensive. Price is important when you are taking at least 1200 mgs per day. Whenever my wife is at Costco she checks for a sale price since I go through a bottle every two weeks.

So you can imagine her surprise when she discovered that the 150 mgs with 120 capsules had been discontinued. In it's place was another brand, also made with the trans process but with a much higher price tag. So she went shopping around online and this is some of what she found.

For those who do shop Costco, they now carry Nature Made - they do have a coupon but that may expire soon.

We've been buying some Nutraceutical Sciences Institute products through Vitacost and are happy with NSI. The NSI CoQ10 is $23.99 for 240 100 mg capsules. For me that means a daily cost of $1.20 per day down .59 from the $1.79 we were paying for TruNature. The shipping cost - if any - is offset by the lack of sales tax so we ordered a couple of bottles because we know that NSI is a natural.

Vitacost also provides a drug interaction service - in this case we linked with the CoQ10 interactions.

And then she found Puritan's Pride which carries a CoQ10 they call Q-Sorb. Right now they have some BOG2 and the price for three 60 count 200 mg bottles worked out to be $1.07 per day. She was able to get the verification of the Trans process (yeast to extraction to purification to crystallization to drying to packing) through the Live Chat at the Help Page-Contact Us - found it near the bottom of the page.

Swanson Health Products carries more than one brand. We received an early evening immediate response from Phillip E in Customer Care at Swanson Vitamins which impressed us:
Thank you for contacting Swanson Health Products! I am happy to help you!
All of our CoQ10 is from the trans-isomer.
All of our CoQ10 is natural and produced through a fermentation process.Here is a link to the Swanson catalogue of CoQ10 products. We determined the lowest cost to be 100 count 100 mg capsules at $1.02 per day.

Because Swanson Health Products also carries NOW CoQ10, she also wrote to NOW Foods and received a prompt reply from the Science & Nutrition Group who also sent this link the next morning:
Our Japanese sourced CoQ10 material is the best quality,
highest grade Coenzyme Q10 available.
All trans- isomer produced via fermentation.
Also once this raw material is received it is then handled using
Good Manufacturing Practices.
Products are get tested for purity.
Microbiological and the values of heavy metals such as Lead, Arsenic, Cadmium,
Mercury, Aluminum are specified well as other impurities.
Because swallowing is such a serious problem in Parkinson's Disease, Swanson has a pdf format printable pill size guide which I find very useful. Of course they are one of the few companies to indicate the capsule size.

We know there are other companies out there but we're pleased with the process and the cost per day which we've listed here. We certainly hope that this helps your search.

We're aware that the dry form of CoQ10 may provide the most accessible benefit to the body. We're also aware that capsules are easier for me at this stage in the PD journey.