Do lentils contain levodopa?
 

Do lentils contain levodopa?

As far as a know the only foods containing levodopa are macuna puriens and fava beans.

On Monday and yesterday I ate large amounts of red split lentils, about 50gm dried weight in total. I found that I was "on" all day with just one dose in the morning of Stalevo, plus the other non-levodopa drugs I take. Put another way, I went without about 250mg of levodopa without effect.

(Note, I'm not saying this was better than my normal drugs, just that it was an alternative way to give the same effect.)

Today, lentil-free I'm back on my normal drug regime.

Googling around I came up with one reference:

"Determination of levodopa by capillary zone electrophoresis using an acidic phosphate buffer and its application in the analysis of beans."

Zhang, Zhai and Hu write:

"A simple capillary zone electrophoresis method has been developed for the quantification of levodopa in broad bean and lentil."

http://openagricola.nal.usda.gov/Record/IND43708486

Unfortunately, I can't get through the pay wall to get to the results, so I can't be sure that the paper above shows that lentils do contain levodopa.

John

lentils are a staple in my diet and i have never perceived a benefit, they are more likely to interfere with ldopa absorption since they are about 20% protein.

ldopa is actually considered a toxin, something plants developed as a defense to keep animals from eating the plant. if they ever had ldopa, i imagine over the hundreds of years they have been grown it has been selected/bred out.

lentils/pulses are a staple in south asia, i assume billions of people consume them, i can't believe they have ldopa.

as far as electrophoresis in the home, i imagine anything is possible, when i did it in college i think the gel had to be handled/prepared very carefully since it was slightly toxic, a highly regulated power source was used to give consistant results. i used it just to compare banding on different samples of oats to compare/contrast their genetics, not to make specific measurements. you still need to quantify the bands which i imagine needs another instrument to optically measure the density of the band and compare it against a control of pure l-dopa. so measuring very small amounts - if too much won't get bands, just huge smudges, need more than a kitchen scale, filters, centrifuge

have fun.

I am also wondering this
 

I started eating a lot of pea/rice protein isolate and have been noticing some effect

Danny, welcome to the forum.

Almost 6 years later ...

Unfortunately, the link given is broken. But, this one now works:
Get PDF - Determination of levodopa by capillary zone electrophoresis using an acidic phosphate buffer and its application in the analysis of beans
It is still behind a pay wall.

Regarding the determination of levodopa in lentils I would now suggest spectroscopy. There's many "citizen science" articles about the technique.

John