Mucuna Pruriens

What follows below is correspondence I received from Dovida about mucuna pruriens.  She is the wife of Michael Day who shares a wealth of information about Michael’s experience  taking mucuna to address his Parkinson’s symptoms.

Parkinsons Recovery provides information, support and resources to individuals interested in identifying natural therapies and treatments that offer the opportunity to celebrate symptom relief.

Robert Rodgers PhD
Founder 2004
Parkinsons Recovery
Road to Recovery from Parkinsons Disease

Dear Robert,

I am taking the time to write to you today to let you know about the death of my beloved partner Michael. You might remember us – we live in Venezuela.

Both of us love what you share with the Parkinsons community. We also love and appreciate the generous time you have spent with us on the phone several times over the past 6 years. Michael contributed a deeply thoughtful piece on his relationship to this health challenge which you published on your blog a number of years ago.

I am also writing because I want to contribute to your community through an update on Michaels experience using Mucuna, which remained a very positive one up until his death. I have also included some other things he had begun to experiment with.
I was not sure where to post it so that it would be read by as many people as possible.
Perhaps you could choose a way to share this?

Regarding his death: Last month Michael and I both caught a virulent flu that is going around. We almost never socialize and therefore pretty much always avoid the latest flu or cold. However, it was the birthday of the woman who takes care of our apartment building whom we adore. We had given her a gift and she came upstairs to thank us. 1 hug. That is all it took.

With Michaels challenged overall health, the flu quickly became double pneumonia and 2 weeks later he died on Saturday morning, July 21st. He was 64 yrs young.
He died at home with me, our friend who lives with us, and a nurse who was taking care of him with IVs, antibiotics, oxygen etc. We had done our best to create a stay at home hospital experience for him.

Michael managed to tell me he loved me earlier that morning and our friend tells me I whispered the same in his ear just before he died. My memory is a blur of those last moments. Having the neurological challenges of Parkinsons made it harder for Michael to cough out the mucous that filled his lungs.

I ask people with the same challenge to please take extra care to avoid getting a chest infection. You may be at a disadvantage and not have as strong a capability of coughing than most people.

Robert, I believe that everything is Love/Consciousness, including the bacteria that killed Michael’s body. It is not possible for anything else to be true. There is nothing in existence that is not loving awareness. All of the universe worked in harmony to carry Michael into the next stage.

Even Michael himself had made some unusual choices in the prior few weeks that greatly weakened his body. He was doing some writing and became like a man possessed, not stopping to eat or drink. It was wrecking his neurology – making his whole body writhe and shake – yet he felt compelled to keep going. I could not convince him to stop and did not try that hard either because I implicitly have always trusted Michael and his own inner guidance. Now I can look back and see how the choices were lining up to bring him to this transition from in the body to outside the body.

I have had Michaels body cremated and at some point I will take the ashes to India, a place in the sacred river Ganges. I will be staying on Isla de Margarita for now. It is a gentle place with warm ocean water and it is incredibly inexpensive to live here. $150-$200/month is plenty, which is a blessing since my body is not yet in great health (fibromyalgia) and able to work.

Michael and I were together literally almost every day of the past 29 years. I keep wondering when I am going to fall apart. But instead of crumbling I feel tremendous love and spiritual energy pouring into me, no doubt a lot coming from Michael. He is a very highly evolved soul.

My focus now is doing everything I can to let go of the chronic body pain I have carried so many years. Also, waking up and becoming established in remembering my true Self – experiencing the Oneness that Is – that is forever on my plate, too.

Mucuna Pruriens

Here is the scoop on Mucuna Pruriens for Parkinsons and a detailed description of Michaels experience with it. Some people use it as an adjunct to medication like Sinemet in order to reduce the amount of medication, and then there are people like Michael who either want a more natural approach or have too many side effects with sinemet that use mucuna exclusively. Michael was never able to tolerate any of the medications and all natural strategies had failed up until what I describe below.

Michael had tried mucuna pruriens years ago – we bought some on Amazon.
What we did not realize was that Michael needed a much higher extract of mucuna.
The extract you can get from mucuna is L Dopa.The stuff we bought on amazon was only 15% L Dopa. Eventually we befriended a woman in the Netherlands that was getting great results with a 98% L Dopa extract of Mucuna that she was buying from someone in Australia (who got his supply from China).The 2 main source countries are India and China.

At the point that we learned this information, Michael was in very dire straits.
This was the winter of 2016. He was 97% dependent- he needed help dressing, eating, turning over in bed, covering himself with the sheet, bathing and even wiping his butt. He was considered Stage IV Tremor Dominant Parkinsons by his neurologist. He could walk a little, falling forward and grabbing the walls for support. He could barely speak at an audible level and his diction was terrible.

He would have to whisper in my ear and I would decipher it. He also had constant tremendous pain due to muscle stiffening in his arms and legs. I had started interviewing 24/7 care because it was quickly becoming more than me and our friend who lived with us could handle.

I bought some of the 98% L Dopa and within 3 weeks of starting it Michael could go outside and walk. All pain left and all neurological symptoms improved. By 6 weeks he was 100% independent and he remained 100% independent until his death in July 2018 from a flu that progressed quickly into double pneumonia. His body had desperately needed L Dopa and this high potency mucuna gave it to him. He still had some tremor and low energy but everything was better. Even skin problems cleared up.

Eventually I found a source in the US that sells 99% extract and actually charges less than anyone else. Michael started with a dose of 300 mg just to see if he could tolerate it. He was always very sensitive. The effects initially lasted 3-4 hrs. This was January 2017.

Slowly we raised the dose to 700 mg 4-5x/day and eventually 850 mg 5x/day. Over time he did require more mucuna as well as more often – every 2-3 hours. He and got up to 1200 mg 5-6x/day this past year. Most people using mucuna do not get the horrible side effect of dyskinesias (uncontrollable movements) that many people get from the drugs. At about 1200 mg mucuna, Michael did have some dyskinesia and he cut back to 1100 mg which reduced them. I know a woman that manages with 650 mg 4x/day for many years and a woman who uses a large dose of 5000 mg 3x/day for many years. Neither experience dyskinesias.

Everyone is different in terms of dose. You just start low and experiment.
I have also wondered about it being even more beneficial to add in some non-L-Dopa extract version of mucuna since the entire plant has many desirable healing properties. Places like Banyan Botanicals carry good quality organic whole plant mucuna if you want to try that along with the 98-99% L Dopa extract of Mucuna.

As a reference point – at Michael’s high dose of 1100-1200 mg 6x/day, a kg that costs $185 would last 2-3 months. In recent months Michael began experimenting with adding 5HTP and L-Tyrosine to better balance out his neurotransmitters and possibly increase the benefit of the mucuna.

He learned about these additions from John Greys work on improving brain health.
Michael had yet to notice any difference but it really could have been too soon to judge plus he did not take these extra amino acids consistently.

Michael was also experimenting with taking mannitol to extend the effect of the mucuna. He took 1 beano-type capsule along with it to prevent gas and bloating which can happen with mannitol. It was a little soon to tell but Michael felt it was helping and he did not get bloating.

Many people who take Parkinsons medications have to contend with nausea from the drug. It is the L Dopa/ levodopa causing nausea. Michael did get nausea when he started on mucuna, but eventually we discovered that taking about 1000-2000mg of straight Vitamin C from ascorbic acid at the same time as the mucuna worked perfectly and he never had nausea again.

This is also working to prevent nausea for some friends who are also taking mucuna.
It can not be buffered C- it needs to be ascorbic acid, which thankfully is very inexpensive. (You can get ascorbic acid at a great price at the same place that sells the mucuna). 

Candied ginger can also work for nausea but then you are also getting a lot of sugar so we were really happy to discover the Vit C worked. Mucuna extract is a tasteless white to off-white powder. I mixed it along with the Vit C into some room temp herbal tea sweetened with honey (preferably raw honey that has more healing properties).
Honey always helped Michael swallow.

Here is the US based company I bought mucuna from at a good price. We have also referred a number of people to this source and the mucuna is helping them, too.
(I am not an affiliate and I get no financial benefit if you buy here).

https://www.nutrivitashop.com/l-dopa-100-pure-levodopa-mucuna-pruriens-dopamine/

You will also need a good mg scale so you can be exact in your dose. Here is a link to a scale that has worked well for me.

Scale: there are similar ones on Amazon that have even better reviews, but this one has always worked for me and has not needed recalibration even after 18 months of frequent use. https://amzn.to/2BbNr0l

One more thing to mention that may help your readers.There is a Chinese Herbal Formula that has helped many people with tremors. a friend of Michaels has used it for many months with great benefit. Michael had barely started it when he died so I can not comment on his experience. 

Here is one place that sells it.This place seems to have the best price and you can get 10% off using code: Wholesale https://www.maxnature.com/plumflower-tian-ma-gou-teng-san.html

Please feel free to post my email address of dovidagoodman@gmail.com I am happy to answer questions about anything I have written here.

Warmest regards,
Dovida