Eating a healthy diet in middle age may help reduce some of the symptoms that can come before a Parkinson’s diagnosis, according to new research.
People with Parkinson’s can experience symptoms including constipation, daytime sleepiness and depression for more than 10 years before any movement-related symptoms start.
Researchers from Harvard University in Boston, US, analysed the diets of almost 50,000 people. They were asked about their diets every four years from the 1980s until they were middle-aged.
They were then asked, in 2012, if they experienced two symptoms: constipation, and rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, which causes people to shout and rapidly move in their sleep. Both symptoms are associated with Parkinson’s.
And in 2014 to 2015, more than 17,000 of the participants were asked if they’d experienced a loss of their sense of smell, impaired colour vision, daytime sleepiness, body pain and depression.
The researchers also analysed the participants’ diets, and grouped them into five groups, depending on how closely their diets were to either the alternate Mediterranean diet, which includes only whole grains and excludes dairy, or the Alternative Healthy Eating Index, which also includes a lot of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes and low to no amounts of red meat.
The study, published in the American Academy of Neurology’s ‘Neurology’ journal, found that people who ate the closest to these two diets were a third less likely to have the above symptoms that come before Parkinson’s than those whose diets least resembled the two diets.
A healthier diet can be associated with other healthier lifestyle choices, such as smoking and exercise, but the researchers controlled for these factors, making their findings independent of these.
Among 30,000 women in the study, 37 percent of those whose diets were least comparable to the two diets had constipation, 15 percent had body pain and 17 percent had depression, compared to 32 percent, 13 percent and 14 percent respectively among those who followed the diets the closest.
Among 6,000 men, 22 percent of those whose diets were least comparable to the two diets had constipation, compared to 12 percent among those who followed the diets the closest.
The researchers concluded that a diet rich in vegetables, nuts, legumes, and low in alcohol, were linked with a lower risk of having three or more of the preceding Parkinson’s symptoms.
However, participants were not asked about preceding symptoms when the study began, so may have changed their diets as a result of experiencing these symptoms.
“While this study does not show cause and effect, it certainly provides yet another reason for getting more vegetables, nuts and legumes in your diet,” said study author Samantha Molsberry, postdoctoral fellow from Harvard University.
“More research is needed to determine whether eating a healthy diet could delay or even prevent the development of Parkinson’s disease among people who have these preceding symptoms already.”
