Video: Parkinson’s Disease and Gut Microflora
I hope you enjoy this video on Parkinson’s disease and the role that gut bacteria may play in the development of this condition. A word of caution: the research behind this information is based on the recent animal studies. In this case, the animals were genetically engineered to have too much alpha-synuclein. This is the protein that is believed to be pathologically accumulating in the cells of basal ganglia as well as digestive tract. Whether this process occurs in the same way in humans remains to be seen through clinical trials.
Would rather read about it? Here are the highlights I discuss:
(Parkinson’s Disease and Gut Microflora video section: 00:00)
Hello, and welcome! My name is Dr. Maria Shapoval, ND. I’m a Naturopathic Doctor focusing on neurological health and various neurodegenerative conditions. Today’s blog topic is the connection between Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and bacteria.
Recent news articles and research link microflora to the start of Parkinson’s, and in this blog I will go through a little bit of a background for how we got to this research and what it can mean for you today in terms of Parkinson’s treatment approaches as well as lifestyle choices that you can be making now.
What do we know about Parkinson’s Disease?
(Parkinson’s video section: 00:38)
Parkinson’s Disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that predominately affects dopamine-producing neurons in a specific area of the brain (substantia nigra) responsible for body movement. As dopamine-producing neurons rapidly die, Parkinson’s motor symptoms such as tremors, difficulty initiating movement, shuffling gait, and change in posture occur.
Aside from the effects on the motor system, we know that symptoms like constipation, and other digestive system malfunctions can actually pre-date the start of the motor symptoms by 15, sometimes even 20 years.
This means that the start of Parkinson’s Disease doesn’t actually begin in the substantia nigra, even though this is where we see most of the damage. The start of the changes can actually take place in the digestive tract within the nerve cells of the vagus nerve.
The gut-brain connection: early hypothesis
(Parkinson’s video section: 1:35)
The initial hypothesis behind the start of Parkinson’s Disease, the Braak theory, was that the condition may have actually begun in the gastrointestinal system. The toxins or damage to the nerves caused a change to the nerves which were then carried through to the brain. This is why some of the therapies you see today focus on cutting the vagus nerve, which shows some improvement to the motor symptoms.
Smell loss and the gut
(Parkinson’s video section: 2:26)
The other Parkinson’s symptom that pre-dates movement-related difficulties is the loss of sense of smell. Here, the olfactory nerve is also damaged a long time in advance before any damage to the brain occurs.
What we know happens with Parkinson’s disease is that the alpha synuclein, one of the proteins that is involved in the trafficking of neurotransmitters between the gut and the brain, starts to misform. When this happens, the body struggles to break it down.
Usually misformed proteins happen fairly frequently as they are used to some damage, and so the proteins are recycled. But, for whatever reason, this conformational change in the alpha synuclein prevents the body from breaking them down which leads to their accumulation.
What we know so far about why this happens:
There’s some genetic predisposition as there is some Parkin genes that have been isolated that can create mutated forms of this protein at the start.
The process of breaking down proteins may be broken down with Parkinson’s Disease.
With Parkinson’s Disease, there’s an accumulation of iron that happens in the substantia nigra. The question here is whether the iron is the chicken or the egg. Was it the protein that folded and caused problems? Or was the damage due to the accumulation of iron? Regardless of the starting point, the digestive tract appears to be where the misformation of the protein begins.
Current research in this area is trying to figure out the trigger for the aggregation of the misformed proteins. Foods and infections are being investigated as possible reasons.
View the Video for more information.