[lurkingforacure]

There is currently a trial recruiting in the UK (Oxford Univ.) to determine whether a ketone ester supplement can help with PD. This has huge potential to help millions of people if shown to be beneficial, which after doing some reading, I think it does. Participate if you can.

The ketone ester was developed by Dr. Veetch at the NIH (funding currently being provided by the military of all orgs.!). You can read about his work online as well as in Dr. Newport's book "Alzheimer's: what if there was a cure?", in which Dr. Newport chronicles her husband's improvement from Alz. after consuming coconut oil. Dr. Newport has a fairly complex theory about why the oil helps her husband but the gist of it is that the neurons lose their ability to take up glucose and as they run out of fuel to carry on their functions, symptoms begin to show up and get worse as the cell continues to struggle for fuel until it just runs out of gas completely. I hope I'm not butchering her theory too badly, but this is my general understanding.

They have confirmed that people with Alz. (and Pd, for that matter) have decreased glucose uptake, as shown on PET scans. So if less glucose is being taken up, for whatever reason, it only makes sense that those neurons are going to struggling mightily to maintain homeostasis and carry on their many functions, which include communication with other neurons.

Fortunately, our brain cells have a fuel alternative to glucose: ketones.

When we take coconut oil, it is metabolized so as to create ketones which our brain neurons can use as an alternative fuel. The ketones readily cross the BBB, do NOT need insulin or an insulin receptor to be taken up by the cell and used as fuel, and can be used by the neurons in place of glucose to carry on their many cellular functions.

You can get ketones by either going with the ketogenic diet (90% fat, ugh, and hard to maintain long-term), eating coconut oil (which our body takes the medium chain triglycerides and makes ketones out of them-hope I got that right), or starving yourself, in which case the body creates ketones when it burns stored fat (but again, can't maintain this for long because eventually you'll run out of fat stores..).

We began taking coconut oil several times a day one week ago. Too early to tell: Dr. Veetch believes it will take at least one month on the oil to tell a difference. There are no side effects although if you try this, you may notice a new urgency to use the restroom, so may want to stay close to the facilities the first few weeks until you get used to things.

We have discussed Dr. Newport here before and her book is very well-written. She discusses many aspects of neurodegeneration that we have discussed on this forum, including inflammation and infection. I did not know that coconut oil was anti-bacterial, which she mentions in her book as her husband's fever blister outbreaks all but disappeared when he began taking the oil. Many others with Alz. and fever blisters (herpes simplex I) similarly reported to her that the fever blister outbreaks stopped once the coconut oil was begun. Makes one wonder.

She also briefly discusses how her discovery has not been met with happiness by the Alz. orgs. Particularly surprising given how many are trying the coconut oil and reporting back to her the improvements seen (she includes several emails she has received from people trying the coconut oil, and not just suffering from Alz., there are several emails from PWP, other dementias, etc).

Another bonus I learned in her book: the medium chain triglyceride fats like coconut oil are not stored as fat. I don't really understand how that works but it sounds great to me.

If anyone decides to try the coconut oil, be sure it's non-processed and organic. Keep a log of how you feel and what changes you observe, and share with us here.

And if you're in the UK near Oxford Univ., see if you can participate in the trial. You can find more info. here:

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01364545