How peppers can lower your risk of Parkinson’s

For years, my father suffered at the hands of Parkinson’s. Slowly and all too painfully, he lost the ability to take care of himself, to live his life in any semblance of the way he had before.

He became bedridden and compromised in every way imaginable. After 16 years of fighting, he went to the hospital one last time. As so often happens with chronic disease, one complication led to another: he got pneumonia and spent his last few weeks on a ventilator, suffering through a painful, prolonged death.

The weeks he spent in that hospital bed before he passed were the worst weeks of both his and my life.

Parkinson’s is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s and it affects around 130,000 people in the UK, usually presenting after the age of 50.

The disease is caused by the death of specialised nerve cells in a region of the brain that controls movement. Hallmark symptoms, which worsen as the disease progresses, include hand tremors, limb stiffness, impaired balance and difficulty walking. It can also affect mood, thinking and sleep. The disease can end badly — just as it did for my father — and it is not currently curable.

repeated head injury can be a trigger, which could be why footballers and boxers, including Muhammad Ali, often fall victim to the condition.

However, you are more likely to develop the disease from toxic pollutants in the environment that can build up in the food supply and eventually affect the brain. Poultry and tuna are leading food sources of arsenic; dairy is the number-one source of lead; and seafood, including tuna, is a major source of mercury.

An analysis of more than 12,000 food and feed samples across 20 countries found that the highest contamination of the toxic chemical polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) was found in fish and fish oil, followed by eggs, dairy and then other meats. PCB is implicated in increasing the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

The lowest contamination was found at the bottom of the food chain, in plants, and people who eat a plant-based diet have been found to have significantly lower blood levels of PCB.

There are a number of simple things you can do to decrease your risk of Parkinson’s disease. You can protect your head; exercise regularly (check my Daily Dozen list); avoid becoming overweight; eat peppers (see below) and berries and drink green tea; and minimise your exposure to pesticides, heavy metals, dairy and other animal products.

It’s worth it. Trust me when I say that no family should have to endure the tragedy of Parkinson’s.