In the first article, the focus was the science. Parkinson’s disease has a real and measurable relationship with the gut microbiome, the trillions of bacteria and other microbes that live in the gut. That relationship shows up in gastrointestinal symptoms that often appear early, a vagus nerve route between belly and brain, abnormal α-synuclein, a protein that can misfold and build up in Parkinson’s, in gut tissue before diagnosis, recurring changes in which gut microbes are

The first sign was constipation. For decades. Not a tremor. Not stiffness. Not a change in walking. Just a sluggish bowel that, at the time, seemed ordinary enough to ignore. Many people who later receive a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis can trace, in retrospect, a long-running familiarity with constipation, sometimes ten, fifteen or even twenty years before anything trembled or stiffened. Clinicians, looking back through the records, often see the same quiet trajectory (Pfeif

In the first part of this 2-part series, we explored why amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, may not be only a disease of motor neurons. We looked at early digestive symptoms, changes in the gut barrier, disturbed microbial communities, immune activation, and the small molecules that can travel from the bowel into the blood. The natural question is this: if the gut is involved, can we do anything about it? Can diet help? Can prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, faecal microbi