In The Parkinson’s Plate: A Health & Diet Guide to Manage Your Journey, Dr. Okun and co-author Emily Truscott present the essential role nutrition and lifestyle can play in managing Parkinson’s disease. Rather than simply providing a collection of recipes, The Parkinson’s Plate helps readers understand why nutrition matters in Parkinson’s disease and how to put that knowledge into practice. The book covers topics including gut and brain health, protein and fibre, maintaining healthy weight and muscle, nutrition and medications, and popular dietary approaches.

Discover the Complete Updated Research:

• What does the research actually tell us about diet and Parkinson’s? Discover the evidence on whether dietary patterns and individual nutrients may influence Parkinson’s symptoms, quality of life or disease progression, while separating promising findings from what has not yet been established in clinical trials.
• Protein, levodopa and medication interactions. Understand why dietary protein can compete with levodopa for absorption and transport, when protein timing may matter, which foods and dietary factors can affect Parkinson’s medications, and why protein restriction is not appropriate for everyone.
• Mediterranean vs. ketogenic diets. Explore what is known, and what remains uncertain, about these two dietary approaches. Research on the Mediterranean diet has found associations with lower Parkinson’s risk and improvements in some gastrointestinal and cognitive measures, but evidence that it changes motor symptoms or disease progression remains limited. Research on ketogenic diets is promising but still requires larger, longer-term clinical trials.
• Weight loss and nutritional health. Discover why weight loss and malnutrition can occur in Parkinson’s, including the effects of motor symptoms, gastrointestinal dysfunction, swallowing difficulties and treatment, and why maintaining adequate calories, protein and key nutrients is an important part of care.
• Fiber, constipation and gut health. Examine the evidence for dietary fiber in managing constipation, one of the common non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s, including the potential benefits and the risks of excessive fiber supplementation for people vulnerable to weight loss or malnutrition.
• The gut microbiome and Parkinson’s. Explore rapidly advancing research into the relationship between the gut microbiome, gastrointestinal function and Parkinson’s, including emerging evidence that gut bacteria may influence levodopa metabolism and medication effectiveness.
• What is “nutritional overreach”? Understand the risks of making dietary claims that go beyond the available evidence and learn how to distinguish evidence-based nutrition strategies from interventions that remain experimental or unproven.
• Beyond nutrition. Get up-to-date information on medications, surgical and device-based therapies, rehabilitation, exercise, mental health support, lifestyle interventions and the central role of the multidisciplinary care team.