Quote:
Originally Posted by soccertese
if your theory was correct wouldn't we see clusters of p.d., especially in smaller communities where people ate the same foods and especially in germany, norway, etc. where there is a lot more fat in the diet and lots of small rural communities but good healthcare records?
plus i would think you would see more pd running in families.
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I dunno. How's that for an answer? If folks in a small community are eating mostly the same foods and those foods are healthy, like in my mom's community where she grew up, I don't think we would see a correlation because no one from there has PD that I know of. They may be fatter now, have heart issues, diabetes, maybe some blood pressure issues here and there, but I've not heard of anyone getting PD. And they are living long enough that we would have seen some cases of PD by now, if anyone was going to get it.
But I don't think we should disregard the effect(s) of genes or the environment, although to date I'm not aware of any striking correlation between PD and one over the other (rural vs. urban, for example) or geographical region. All of us are different and tolerate/process foods and the quantities of those foods differently.
Fats are not bad! This is another area where we have been misled. I've read roughly thirty percent of our diet should be fat, that is a lot. Where we go wrong is eating the wrong kinds of fat: margarine, reduced fat ice cream and cheeses, modified fats, trans fats, all of these I call frankenfoods, instead of nuts, olive oil, butter, cream, and more butter (just kidding). Sooo many books and magazines out there today are touting the benefits of healthy fats, particularly the kind found in the main foods of the countries you mention: mackerel, sardines, all of those oily fishes are very high in those healthy omega fats if you can stand to eat them.
I've read for some time that diets low in fat are not necessarily the healthiest and cause dry and brittle everything: hair, skin, nails....surely it stands to reason that lack of sufficient healthy fats can cause similar brittleness inside the body, as in our blood vessels?
I'm not saying I think vascular malfunction totally explains all cases and aspects of PD. I'm just saying this theory answers a lot of questions about PD, for me. It also seems to be a real solution that gets at a problem, instead of just treating symptoms. We'll be asking for this test at our next neuro exam. I bet our neuro will have never heard of any of this.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts and comments.