"Treating Parkinson’s Disease with Velvet Beans (Mucuna pruriens)"
I have several videos on foods that may trigger
Parkinson’s disease, but how can diet be used in treatment?
This video and the next look at beans for treating this disease.
Two centuries have passed since James Parkinson’s Essay
on the Shaking Palsy described a disease characterized
by tremor and problems with movement.
Today, treatment options include surgically
implanting electrodes into the brain.
There has to be a better way.
We’ve known since the 1950’s that Parkinson’s disease
is manifested by a dopamine deficiency in the brain.
Well then why not eat a dopamine diet?
A variety of fruits and vegetables contain
the same dopamine made by our brain.
Unfortunately, dopamine can’t cross the blood-brain barrier
and hence is ineffective as therapy, however the dopamine precursor,
known as l-dopa or levodopa can get from the blood up into the brain
where it can then be converted to dopamine within the brain
by an enzyme called decarboxylase.
We don’t want the levodopa to be converted to dopamine
outside the brain because then it can’t get in,
so we give people a decarboxylase inhibitor which itself
can’t get into the brain, so that keeps levodopa from prematurely
turning into dopamine before it gets into the brain where we need it.
So eating dopamine- rich foods doesn’t help,
but what if we ate levodopa-rich foods?
More than 1500 years before Dr. Parkinson came on the scene,
an Indian physician seems to have nailed it
and even suggested a treatment, velvet beans,
the plant with the highest amount of L-DOPA.
Hmm, so might there be a way to
forestall the epidemic of Parkinson’s Disease
through plant-based remedies after all?
Levodopa is the gold standard therapy for Parkinson’s patients,
but most Parkinson’s patients in low-income areas
cannot afford long-term daily Levodopa therapy.
In rural Africa, for example, it is estimated that
only 15% of patients are treated with levodopa,
because the daily cost of Levodopa treatment is about a dollar day,
which may be half of what people make in a day.
Same with other regions in the Global South.
L-DOPA is mostly unavailable or unaffordable.
So patients frequently use powdered velvet beans
as a replacement or supplement to the drug.
But does it work? You never know...
until you put it to the test.
Velvet beans in Parkinson’s Disease a randomized,
double blind, clinical study, and, a dose of 30g,
which is about three tablespoons led to a reliable and sustained
antiparkinsonian effect in all patients,
working significantly quicker than the drug,
working significantly longer than the drug,
and working significantly better than the drug,
in another double-blind, randomized, head-to-head crossover study.
The levodopa in velvet beans appears to be 2–3 times
more potent as compared to the same dose of pill-form Levodopa,
suspected to be because there may be some intrinsic
decarboxylase inhibitor compound in the plant as well.
OK, but those were single dose studies.
What about the chronic use of velvet beans for Parkinson’s.
Fourteen patients with advanced Parkinson’s received
roasted velvet bean powder or the standard drug,
switching back and forth for months, looking at changes
in quality of life, activities of daily living,
movement and non-movement symptoms,
and time with good mobility
without troublesome involuntary writhing movements
and the velvet beans seemed to work as well as the drug
in all measures of efﬁcacy, including quality of life.
Here’s a video of someone with Parkinson’s solely treated with
velvet bean powder for 14 years, before and after treatment:
Okay, can you put both hands out for me?
And tap your fingers on the right, just the right.
And the left...
And turn...
Now open and close.. the left,
the right...
turn, turn around
Despite the efficacy, the chances of this cheap herbal remedy
ever being licensed seems unlikely—and for good reason.
First of all, the stuff evidently tastes nasty.
And we don’t really have good data
going out more than a few months.
While velvet beans may potentially be part of the answer
to Parkinson's disease management
in low-income countries, in high-income countries,
one may be tempted to prefer them to drugs
just because it's a "more natural therapy,"
but researchers discourage patients and physicians
to consider its use when the drugs are available.
So levodopa in pill form should remain
the first-line treatment for Parkinson’s.
However, velvet bean powder may be better tolerated
in certain patients.
Psychologically, some patients just have a thing against
taking pills and so if they refuse,
then certainly the beans can step in.
But otherwise, velvet bean supplements suffer from
the issues common to all supplements, specifically lack
of sufficient regulation and quality control.
There’s all sorts of brands out there, but there's no
head-to-head comparisons as to which is best,
and the quality of the products likely vary,
but you don’t know...
until you put it to the test.
Six brands of velvet bean product
were ordered through the internet and most of them
four out of six showed a large discrepancy between
the claim on their label and the actual L-Dopa content,
and only two even came close.
The remaining products contained considerably less,
less than 10% in two cases.
Too bad there isn’t a food source of L-dopa that you could just eat
instead of taking in a supplement.
Well, wait a second.
L-dopa was originally discovered, more than a century ago,
in faba beans.
Might eating faba beans help with Parkinson’s?
I’ll explore just that question, next.