Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

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.

Originally Posted by soccertese

i gave my opinion, if diet was a sig. factor we'd see clusters of pd. thousands of studies have found disease clusters due to diet/and or chemical, it isn't that hard.

google vascular and pd, there was a recent study stating the procedure didn't help.
i'm skeptical as always.

Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

IGood point....but this "diet" is so widespread, I don't think you can call it a cluster. Most everyone in this country, until relatively recently, eats much more differently than those growing up before 1950/1960. Velveeta, white bread, eggless mayonnaise, the advent of packaged and processed foods...and our Western diet has spread like a cancer to so much of the world now. It will be interesting to see how that changes things for them. I think Girija wrote several years ago that they are expecting the PD rates in India to increase significantly...

Additionally, I agree this may not help everyone. The Zamboni procedure did not help all MSers. But even if a few are helped, and I think we will see that it will be faaaar more than a few if the 78% correlation is anything close to being replicated on the clinical trial surgery table, then this is something that should be seriously pursued and quickly.

I have read that strokes can cause PD, and there is actually a subtype called "vascular parkinsonism". So here's a connection there, at least for some people. I wasn't able to find your study/article that said the procedure didn't help....but I vaguely remember reading something awhiile back that said that the Zamboni procedure (pioneered for MS initially) did not help someone with PD. I doubt anyone has had Jannetta's procedure done without benefit to date, as he hasn't even started his surgical clinical trial yet.

Originally Posted by soccertese

what is wrong with white bread? it may bleached but that's the only thing i can think of that might be harmful. it might not be as nutritious as whole wheat but i think you take a lot of pseudo science as fact.
white flour, which has been milled to remove bran and germ, was invented to increase flour's shelf life i believe in the 1700's since the oil in the germ went rancid fairly quickly, it wasn't developed as a conspiracy by wonder bread, pasta is milled de-germed durum wheat, how much pasta does the world eat? just suggesting you don't take for granted everything you read.

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/mil...n/history.html