Paleo Diet for Parkinson's

Parkinson's disease is a nervous system disorder that often affects the patient's motor skills, speech and other movement functions. It can also cause a trembling sensation where it appears the person is shaking.

A Paleolithic diet refers to nutritional intake of foods that were only available more than 10,000 years ago, prior to man inventing cooking. The "Paleolithic" of modern Earth's history began 2.6 million years ago and ended at year 12,000 BP. People believe that eating foods that only our ancestors ate will help contribute to the end of obesity and other diseases such as Parkinson's.

Paleo Diet Basics

The best way to think of this diet is to pretend you are a caveman and you do not own the modern conveniences of today's appliances, such as refrigerators, stoves or microwaves. Go back to the days when humans were hunter-gatherers. The foods that are OK to eat on the Paleolithic diet are meat, chicken, fish, eggs, fruit, vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not potatoes or sweet potatoes), nuts such as walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia and almond, and strawberries, blueberries and raspberries,

The foods that are not allowed on this diet are: Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles; Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas; Potatoes; any dairy products, salts or sugars.
The reason for the exclusion of food is because during the Paleolithic era, man did not have the technology to cook beans or grains, nor did they extract milk from cows, therefore this was not a staple of their diets. Also sugars and salts were also not extracted and used in anything.

Modern-Day Paleo Diet

This diet is similar to what people refer to as no-carb, Atkins or South Beach diets. Scientists, doctors, personal trainers and researchers continue to battle each other in regards to whether eating carbohydrates is really harmful for the body or a quick and easy source of energy.
Pro-Paleolithic diet folks recommend easing a person into such a diet, as a lack of carbs can first make a person very ill. They recommend changing one's breakfast for a couple days, then changing one's lunch for a couple days and finally changing dinners. This should help with the easement process. They also recommend consuming more Omega-3 fatty foods and laying off the Omega-6 rich fatty foods.

Ties to Parkinson's Disease

One of the reasons that a Paleolithic diet is recommended for people who suffer from Parkinson's disease is because researchers believe that grains, beans and potatoes have high amounts of toxins when they are raw, and cooking them kills a lot of the toxins but not all; therefore people are still consuming some toxic foods.
Evidence for this comes from the roughly 80 or so hunter-gather tribes that remain across the world, mostly in Australia, Africa and South America. Researchers have found that these tribes tend to have better overall health than the modern world population and do not suffer from diseases such as Parkinson's, arthritis, diabetes, hypertension or strokes. Some researchers have concluded that this is do to the "ancient" diet that they consume.
While trying any new diet can be an adjustment, it is recommended that you seek advice from your doctor or other health care professional before trying the Paleolithic diet, especially if you are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.