<h1>Well, now I have seen everything</h1>

This is a town of dogs, 99% of them are so small, you could step on one and not even notice it had been squashed. You also see the occasional pitbull, a beautiful dog when it is not in attack mode. I have seen a guy with a large anaconda wrapped around his neck and shoulders and another with a monkey sitting on the handlebars of its owner's bike. But yesterday, I saw the piece de resistance. From a distance, I noticed a gaggle of bikini clad young women crouching around something and a man smiling down on them and answering their questions. As I got closer, I saw the object of their cooing affection. It was a fat black pig!

The ladies were reaching out to stroke the pig, murmuring sweet nothings in the pig's ears. The pig could not have cared less and would have gone on its snorting way, if not restrained by the leash that attached him to his male owner. Obviously the guy was using the pig as a babe magnet and it seemed to be working.

I silently congratulated him while thinking to myself, That pig is worth more dead than it is alive

Yes, I love pork, a good source of protein, which brings me to today's PD topic, "the effect of protein on L-dopa".

If you are taking levodopa medication, and are eating pig or any other source of protein, the protein can sometimes compete with the L-dopa and prevent adequate amounts of drug from entering the bloodstream, thus reducing the effectiveness of the medication.

But, you are saying, "I like pig, beef, soy, etc. In fact, I like all protein. What am I to do?" Well, here is the good news. You don't have to avoid protein, just take your medication 30 - 60 minutes prior to eating thus giving the L-Dopa time to be absorbed into the blood stream. At least that is what I try to do, without much success; but, having read about it in several articles, so many of them, it must be true.

Finally, for the pig owner, you are stuck with that pig. You have a responsibility now, a burden which all us of non-pig owners happily don't have. So be good to your pig (you fool) and please always keep in mind the truism:

“HAM AND EGGS - A day's work for a chicken; A lifetime commitment for a pig.”