Does Parkinson’s Begin in the Gut?
My biggest fear is losing control of myself.
Most people including me, are lucky enough to have fully functioning brains.
They reach out for a spoon and they touch the spoon.
They reach out for a memory of their 18th birthday and they find it.
You can take everything from me, but my body will always be mine.
But…what happens when this doesn’t hold true?
What happens when your brain can’t control your body?
You reach out for a spoon and your hand doesn’t stop shaking…
You reach out for your 18th birthday and there’s nothing there?
I always grew up learning that at the end of the day, no matter what happens, I can always count on myself.
What happens when this isn’t true?
I can’t count on my brain and I lose my power to control my actions.
Neurodegenerative diseases have always freaked me out beyond measure.
They literally break down your brain and impair brain function.
The dumbest thing is, we’ve created a world of insane technology around us.
Think about what a hunter-gatherer from thousands of years ago would say if he were to time travel to this world.
He would die from shock.
He would see millions of people grouped in a tiny space — more people than he’d see in a lifetime.
He would see gigantic things flying in the sky and we’d have to explain that it’s not an alien ship but a common plane with people inside.
He would see us talking to people on little tiny rectangles unimaginable distances away.
And yet he would recognize sickness. He would recognize the people in hospitals struggling to live fighting off diseases.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve made insane advances in medical science and we live orders of magnitude better than they did.
It just seems backwards how we’ve surrounded ourselves with technology yet still struggle with maintaining control over our own bodies.
This combination of fear of neurodegenerative diseases and confusion on why we haven’t optimized humans yet led me to discover something called the microbiome.
What is the Gut Microbiome?
The gut microbiome is a community of bacteria specifically in your gut that has been linked to nearly any major disease we struggle with.
It has been linked with neurodegenerative diseases, communicates with the brain and influences it by producing neurotransmitters like serotonin.
It has been linked to the immune system and research is showing that it may be the reason for inflammation that then triggers a whole cascade of sicknesses and illnesses like Alzheimer's.
Changing levels of bacteria in the gut microbiome has been shown to be more than 90% effective for treating some diseases as well as known to save lives.
Moral of the story: It’s a big deal.
While reflecting and thinking about my fear of neurodegenerative diseases I looked into the link between the microbiome and Parkinson’s and sure enough there was research supporting this link.
I’ve had my mind blown, mind turned into mush, been utterly confused, and I’m going to review what little knowledge I have in this article. 😂
So What Is Parkinson’s?
Parkinson’s disease is at its core caused by the death of dopamine-containing neurons in the substantia nigra which is just a specific part of the brain associated with movement.
The death of around 80% of these neurons is when we see shaking and slow movements we see in Parkinson’s patients.
What causes this loss and slowing of movement in Parkinson’s patients is the substantia nigra’s inability to properly communicate with the other parts of the brain that are in charge of movement.
An increase in dopamine tunes up motor activity from for example say walking to running while a decrease in dopamine is supposed to tune down this activity from running back to walking.
The problem is since Parkinson’s is the death of these dopamine-containing neurons, the brain doesn’t have enough dopamine to signal a tune up in activity and this is why we end up seeing a slowing down and loss of movement in patients.
Another major marker of Parkinson’s discovered through post-mortem exams is the discovery of Lewy bodies which are mostly made up of a protein abundantly formed in the brain called a-synuclein (a-syn).
The overexpression of a-syn has been linked to the aggregation of these Lewy bodies and the degeneration of the dopamine neurons.
The Link To the Microbiome
The funny thing is that a-syn, in post-mortem exams, has been found not only in the brain but also in the guts of Parkinson’s patients! These accumulations are what we think Parkinson’s is caused by.
There have been many theories as to why a-syn is found in the gut and what it’s role even is.
Scientists think that since a-syn appears in children after non-viral infections, it’s some kind of mechanism to trigger an immune response.
The accumulations in Lewy bodies would be the overactivation of this immune response and be an indicator of inflammation in the body.
And what a coincidence that would be, because overactivation of the immune cells in our brain and inflammation are also indicative of Parkinson’s!
The microglia cells (immune cells of the brain) are continuously responding to the inflammation response and as a result, end up releasing a lot more harmful pro-inflammatory molecules than actual beneficial ones.
This results in a positive feedback loop where the more the cells are inflamed, the more inflammatory molecules are released, making it more inflamed, and meanwhile, the sensitive dopamine-containing molecules are dying.
One team discovered that people who received drugs to reduce inflammation the incidence of the neurodegenerative disease dropped 78%! 🔥🔥
But where exactly would this initial inflammation come from?
Turns out that there is a specific endotoxin produced by certain kinds of gut bacteria called LPS.
There is evidence that suggests that autoimmune diseases, allergies, etc are initially caused by the inflammatory response LPS drives.
Now normally, LPS is contained by the gut lining and doesn’t get out into our bloodstreams. As long as it is inside the gut, it’s fine.
BUT, constipation and other gut-related problems are almost in half of all Parkinson’s patients and show up upwards of 10 YEARS before the onset of Parkinson’s in the person.
People with Parkinson’s have been shown to have leaky guts which basically means their gut lining isn’t doing a very good job of keeping the LPS in.
Once the LPS is out and about it causes all sorts of inflammation problems by for example disrupting the blood-brain barrier and causing neuroinflammation and injury.
Like I hinted at before, this inflammation from LPS may activate the microglia response — and if it doesn’t, the a-syn has it covered because it can also activate the microglia or even just plain add to the inflammation problem.
A-syn has been found in the guts of Parkinson’s patients. Buttttt, how does it get from the gut to the brain?🤔
The vagus nerve is what directly connects our gut microbiome to the brain. The gut microbiome has huge effects on our brain and this vagus nerve is a bi-directional communication pathway.
One of the neurotransmitters called serotonin is responsible for mood, social behaviour, memory, and a bunch of other important stuff.
Up to 90% of it is found in the gut. Nine-Zero. 🤯
There’s a lot of other super interesting stuff that goes on with the vagus nerve and the microbiome but the stuff that’s relevant to Parkinson’s…
Studies have shown that if people underwent full truncal vagotomy which is literally just chopping off the vagus nerve so it has little contact with the gut microbiome, was associated with lower levels of contracting the disease.
In one particular experiment, rats that had full truncal vagotomies stopped the progression of a-syn aggregation!
On top of all this, it has been proven that the bacterial communities in the microbiomes of Parkinson’s patients are different from healthy people’s.
One research team genetically engineered mice to overexpress the human a-syn (pre-dispositioned to have Parkinson’s) and raised them in germ-free environments or killed off their microbiomes with bacteria, reduced microglia activation and they didn’t experience as many motor problem as animals with complex microbiota!
This suggests that perhaps microbiomes are essential for the development of Parkinson’s and if we can figure out how to always keep our microbiomes happy, then we could potentially keep ourselves safe from a lot of diseases!
The potential for the microbiome continuously blows my mind every time I read another research paper.
How these little tiny bacteria hold so much power over us.
It would make sense though since we’ve evolved with them since we were cavemen and we would naturally come to depend on them as they depend on us for some things.
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It’s 3:14am, I think I’m going to go to bed now…😂
