B Vitamins

Last week, I spent the week at PD Summer School, a full week of Parkinson’s wellness education. Dr. Laurie Mischley has spent the last 2 decades studying lifestyle and nutrition factors associated with either slower (better) or faster (worse) progression of Parkinson’s disease. The goal is to identify and implement positive deviance strategies that can be used to slow Parkinson’s disease progression ...

Mayo Clinic has published a research commentary that analyzes the relationship between low levels of Vitamin B-12 and Parkinson's Disease. While the paper does not prove causality, it does "propose that vitamin B12 supplementation could be considered as an adjuvant approach to improve cholinergic transmission and, potentially, motor and cognitive function in patients with PD." And it makes a case for "future clinical trials of high-dose vitamin B12 supplementation as a well-tolerated symptomatic adjunctive therapy for posture and gait instability and cognitive impairment in PD." Mayo Clinic Video: The paper analyzes the potential relationship between vitamin B12 and acetylcholine metabolism. Dysfunction ...

A recent study concluded that one of the active forms of Vitamin B-12 offers neuroprotection and significantly prevents neurotoxicity in animal models of Parkinson's which are influenced by a hereditary genetic variation in the LRRK2 gene. What exactly does that mean? Well, I'm not a scientist, and if you are reading this, you probably aren't either...so let's try to break this down so the rest of us can understand. (If by chance, you are a scientist, then I would suggest skipping this article, and reading this article instead: https://scienceofparkinsons.com/2019/03/22/b12/. As usual, the Science of Parkinson's website offers excellent detailed analysis, ...