Does Gout Heal Parkinson’s Disease?

There is no obvious connection between gout and Parkinson’s. Gout is an extremely painful condition in which you have too much uric acid, whereas Parkinson’s is a neurological disease in the brain.

But a new study in the journal Neurological Sciences reveals a weird connection between the two conditions. It seems that suffering from gout can protect you from Parkinson’s.

And with this discovery comes a potential natural cure for Parkinson’s (without having to develop gout).

Uric acid is not only responsible for gout when it occurs in excess, it is also a waste product of our bodies breaking down certain substances. But despite its status as waste product, it is also a strong antioxidant, and can therefore be pretty useful too.

Antioxidants protect our cells from oxidative damage. Many health conditions involve oxidative damage, including Parkinson’s disease.

Previous studies have also found that uric acid was scarce in the brains of people with dopaminergic impairment (related to the neurotransmitter dopamine). Parkinson’s disease involves such impairment.

In response to these facts, Chinese researchers recruited 88 Parkinson’s sufferers and 68 healthy people with whom to compare them; 56 of the Parkinson’s patients were newly diagnosed and only mildly affected, while the other 32 were in the middle-to-late stages of the disease.

They first tested the amount of uric acid in the subjects’ blood. They then analyzed their motor and nonmotor symptoms and performed physical tests, after which they scanned the subjects’ brains to determine the gray matter volume.

The scientists reached some of the conclusions that they had expected:

1. Blood uric acid levels in the Parkinson’s subjects were lower than those in their healthy peers.

2. Blood uric acid levels decreased as the severity of the disease increased.

3. Uric acid was lower in patients with nonmotor symptoms and could therefore predict the presence of cognitive dysfunction, depression, apathy, anxiety, and dysphagia (difficulty swallowing).

4. Low uric acid was associated with a larger decline in gray matter in the brain. The gray matter is made up of your neuron cell bodies (nerve cells).

All this means that uric acid has a protective function against Parkinson’s disease, probably through its antioxidant properties, protecting nerve cells from damage.

Now gout is the condition where uric acid is too high. So one might conclude that having gout lowers your risk of Parkinson’s disease. But if you suffer gout, you definitely want to reverse it using the natural steps found here…

And if you have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, you’ll be happy to hear that thousands of readers are halting their Parkinson’s disease progression by applying the simple lifestyle changes explained here…