In the endless raging debate about the health surrounding caffeine, a new study from Canada offers hope for people with Parkinson’s Disease.

For those who aren’t personally familiar with Parkinson’s (maybe you’re just looking for more reasons to love coffee…), it is a neurodegenerative disease that, most significantly, attacks the basal ganglia–a part of the brain that controls voluntary movement, among other things. This is why those who suffer from Parkinson’s lose control of their movements.

Doctors and scientists are not sure what exactly causes Parkinson’s. It is sort of accepted that it is partially genetic and partially environmental or lifestyle related. But science (though definitely not science journalists) is very reluctant to make black and white statements about the causes of disease until completely sure. Nevertheless, we can definitely see some strong correlations.

For example, strangely, cigarette smokers are less likely to get Parkinson’s. We also know that nearly everyone who has Parkinson’s also has a Vitamin D deficiency. But what we’re interested for the purposes of this article is not only the correlation between drinking coffee and avoiding Parkinson’s, but how caffeine might actually help people turn Parkinson’s disease around.

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada are trying to get a new drug off the ground that they developed using caffeine as a molecular base. Without sounding to science-y, let’s just say that when Parkinson’s advances, the brain isn’t able to properly use dopamine anymore. Dopamine is not only your feel-good neurotransmitter, it is also an important communication tool between your brain cells. When the brain is unable to use it properly, you get the symptoms of Parkinson’s.

The Canadian researchers, however, decided to focus their caffeine-based drug on preventing the misuse of dopamine in the brain cells of a Parkinson’s sufferer rather than what current Parkinson’s medications do, which is to simply increase the amount of dopamine in the brain hoping a flood of the neurotransmitter will help the situation.

Generally, we here at AskDrErnst discourage reliance on pharmaceuticals for a variety of reasons. They often don’t work; they often address only symptoms; they often are misdirected toward secondary health problems; they are thrown at people like candy at a parade in an effort to continuously increase the profits of the bloated pharmaceutical industry; we are over-reliant on medications to treat preventable health problems; they often have side-effects that are worse than the condition they treat; they cause leaky gut and inflammation, which is the root of a lot of modern disease, etc. etc. etc.

That being said, there are certain limitations that conventional doctors and researchers face when trying to find new ways to treat disease. For example, a treatment for Parkinson’s could never be: drink more coffee and get more sun. How would anyone make any money? No, for any sort of treatment to be approved by the FDA, it has to be a synthetic compound created in a lab.

Fortunately, you are not a slave to your doctor–and our clinic is not a slave to the medication-industrial-complex. We’d be more than happy to prescribe you a cup of coffee and some sunlight to either prevent or reverse Parkinson’s. In fact, just go ahead and do that anyway.

But if you’re going to be having a cup of coffee, let’s talk about that quickly. Your average bag of beans at the grocery store is likely going to make things worse for you health-wise. Not only is coffee one of the most pesticide-soaked crops in the world, the packing, shipping and sitting on a shelf waiting to be sold situation promotes mold. The mold is a problem even for organic coffee. The best possible coffee–particularly if you’re using coffee for health reasons–should be organic and consumed as soon as possible after the beans are roasted.

We did find a coffee we strongly feel meets the requirements for being used for its medicinal properties. It’s called Purity Coffee. Check it out by clicking the link. It is organic and it is sent directly to your house right after being roasted. It’s roasted in North Carolina–which is where we happen to be, so we get it within 24 hours of being roasted. But even people in California would see it within two or three days of the beans being roasted, which is an immeasurable improvement over the several months your average bag of coffee sits on a shelf between being roasted and being used.

Plus, it tastes really good. So fight Parkinson’s and have a delicious, healthy cup of coffee while you’re at it.