Dr. Trisha Pasricha

And they die in a part of the brain responsible for movement.

And so that's why we think they get the tremors and rigidity.

But later on in the 90s and 2000s, they started to do these studies where they looked at autopsies of people who had Parkinson's disease, but they looked at their guts instead of looking at their brains.

And it turns out their guts were riddled with this misfolded alpha-synuclein protein.

80% of people with Parkinson's disease have some GI issue, constipation, nausea, trouble swallowing.

It's so severe, and it turns out having constipation early in life is a predictor of Parkinson's disease later.

Yeah.

And again, constipation, just to be so clear, incredibly common.

in our society.

So everyone who has constipation is not going to get Parkinson's disease, but it is associated with a pretty significant increased risk.

And especially when people start to say, oh yeah, I have constipation and someone, this is someone in their forties, maybe 50, like a little bit earlier than you would think of necessarily off the bat for Parkinson's.

But if they say I have constipation, this is new.

Maybe they have a family history of Parkinson's or they say I've lost my sense of smell or I'm having trouble sleeping.

There are all these other signs that are not necessarily directly related to their brain per se and the tremors that you might say, wait, this is starting to form a more suspicious picture for Parkinson's.

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

We think that for a subset of patients, there's some trigger that occurs in the gut first.

And maybe that trigger is an infection.

Maybe it's something in the environment, like a chemical that you might have ingested.

I know a lot of people have thought and have studied the pesticides in the foods that we eat as being a risk factor.

In my labs, we study ulcers and erosions and damage to the mucosal lining.