Last week, I mentioned a very strange cause of Parkinson's disease. Who would have ever imagined that constipation could cause such a devastating brain disorder?
Well, I've got another surprising cause of Parkinson's for you this week. This one, like constipation, starts in the gut.
A team of researchers in London noted that previous research suggested that many with Parkinson's disease have had prior trouble with peptic ulcers. So they set out to see if there was a causal relationship between peptic ulcers and Parkinson's.
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The researchers divided 18 Parkinson's patients into two groups. They gave one group active treatment for the bacteria H. pylori. (H. pylori is a common cause of ulcers.) The other group received a placebo. The researchers then ran two different tests to measure the severity of Parkinson's symptoms.
The first test was measuring the patients' stride length. Parkinson's patients typically see the length of their steps reduce as the disease progresses. The researchers noticed that the Parkinson's patients who received the active treatment for H. pylori infection saw the length of their stride improve. But the majority of those taking the placebo actually showed reductions in their stride length.
The second test was muscle rigidity, which usually progresses with the disease. And indeed, the researchers found that the patients who underwent active H. pylori treatment had reduced muscle rigidity.
The part I like the best is their conclusion. Killing the H. pylori stops the bacterium's production of toxins, "which may have caused cumulative damage over decades." So treatment was able to improve some aspects of physical functioning in people with Parkinson's disease. As you saw last week, toxins really can wreak havoc on your body, including your brain. And now we see even more evidence that proves they cause terrible damage.
Action to take: If you have Parkinson's disease, get tested for H. pylori. If you test positive, you have a couple of options. Antibiotics will work to clear H. pylori. This is the treatment used by the researchers. And it is effective.
There are also non-drug treatments you can use, such as UBI therapy and intravenous hydrogen peroxide. You can read about those in the archives section of my website.