Diet - What and When?

Hi, My name is John Pepper.

Are you aware that, what and when you eat can make a big difference to how successful you are in dealing with your Parkinson’s disease?

What should you avoid eating?

When should you eat and when should you take your medication?

Does it make any difference, when and what you eat?

Why does it make a difference?

When you were diagnosed:

1.  Were you made aware of what you should or should not eat?

2.  When you should eat?

3.  When you should take your medication?

If not, then why not?

I am the author of, ‘Reverse Parkinson’s Disease’. I managed to reverse my Parkinson’s disease, to the extent that nobody would ever know I still have Parkinson’s disease.

If nobody would ever know I still have Parkinson’s disease, then why do I not claim to be CURED?

Not only would that not be true, it would almost definitely stop all future funding for the search for a cure for Parkinson’s disease, if what I claimed was found to be true. None of us wants that, unless it was true.

How do I know that I am not cured, if I look so healthy?

I tried, on three different occasions, before 2002, to stop taking my Parkinson’s medication. Each time I tried, I experienced an unacceptable return of the symptoms, within six weeks.

Since stopping having to take any Parkinson’s medication, I also had to stop my exercise regimen - due to injuries and other health problems – only to experience the same return of my symptoms to that unacceptable level.

Did eating the wrong food cause me any problems?

Yes! Because I had not been told that:

1.  My medication could cause hypertension, and consequently, I should have avoided eating certain types of food! If you Google Tyramine, you will find the foods to avoid if you take MAO-b inhibitors.

2.  I should have been told to regularly check my blood pressure?

3. When I started taking L-Dopa medication, I was not told to not eat grapefruit! I was not told to take that medication at least one hour before eating or one hour after eating!

My blood pressure soared up to the incredible level of 260/190. That could have killed me, or even worse, given me a stroke, which might have left me crippled for life, or even brain damaged. However, because I was in the habit of taking my own blood pressure regularly, It is possible that I might well have got a false reading on my home machine. Because the reading was so high, I tested it twice, and got the same result; but whether that reading was accurate or not, it was obviously very high.

I also suffered a blocked bowel, when my wife and I went on a high protein diet. This put me in hospital, after the first day of taking that diet. I was not to know that this diet is very bad for someone taking an MAO-b inhibitor, and it would not have been reasonable to have expected the neurologist to have warned me against this possibility!

Read what foods to avoid, if you take the medication I took.

We have to assume that all neurologists should know what we should or should not eat, while we take the medication they prescribe. We should therefore expect to be told these things.

Is there anything in my book about which the medical profession should not, or could not be expected, to know?

No!

Then why are Parkinson’s disease sufferers not being told about all this, or was I just unlucky?

Does the news of new developments in medicine not get passed on to the medical profession, on a regular basis, or is it up to the busy doctors to keep up-to-date on all the new medications and their possible side effects, and what foodstuffs to avoid? We have to assume that the drug companies tell the doctors all about the way their medications work and the possible side effects.

So! Where does this problem arise?

Why has my news not been investigated, over the past nine years, since my book first hit the market? Why did I find it necessary to write a book, in order to bring this to everybody’s attention? I was naive enough to think that my recovery from Parkinson’s disease would have been good news to the medical profession; but sadly, it was not. This should have been expected! Medicine is a very conservative profession. A single incidence like this would normally be expected to be viewed with suspicion, unless it started happening to lots of people.

Would it be reasonable to assume that this may not be good news to the pharmaceutical industry, some of whom have been made directly aware of what has happened to me?