Parkinson's or Potassium Deficiency

When nutritionally supporting a person with Parkinson like symptoms, we have found it most helpful to consider additional contributing nutritional insufficiency that cause the same symptoms.

Potassium is probably the number one nutritional deficiency with most people. Many of the indications of low potassium are similar to Parkinson’s.

Let’s consider these:

• High blood pressure

• Muscle cramps

• Insomnia

• Abnormal heartbeat

• Anxiety

• Muscle weakness

• Constipation

• Sugar cravings

• Low endurance

• Fatigue

• Frequent need to urinate at night.

Do these symptoms overlap Parkinson symptoms? The answer is clearly yes.

Just to name a few symptoms that are similar:

• Fluctuating blood pressure

• Muscle stiffness (cramping)

• Sleep disturbances

• Constipation

• Anxiety/depression

• Muscle weakness

• Fatigue

• Frequent urination at night

As we can easily see, there are several issues that may have multiple causes and are similar to symptoms associated with Parkinson’s Disease.

To be sure, there are a large number of additional Parkinson’s like symptoms. However, if we have adequate nutrition, contributing causes may be eliminated.

Our goal is to assist people in getting as much function back as possible. The point here is to increase the amount of potassium via food to eliminate the symptoms. When a person takes in about 4700 mg of potassium daily, we have seen significant relief of symptoms.

For most people, this requires a major shift in the way they eat. This particularly difficult for the person with all these symptoms and almost always depends on the caregiver to make this change occur.

The major question here is, “Is the inconvenience of a large lifestyle change worth all the effort to restore a person to almost full function?”

All the people I have spoken with say a resounding YES. They had a life before the PD like symptoms and they want it back.