Parkinson's Quotes

Fat’ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her. I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain… I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’ ‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’ What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate! I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls.

When prescribing one of the drugs I take, my doctor warned me of a common side effect: exaggerated, intensely vivid dreams. To be honest, I've never really noticed the difference. I've always dreamt big.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?

You have until midnight.” The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him frozen in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, “But he’s there! Potter’s there! Someone grab him!” Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The Gryffindors in front of him had risen and stood facing, not Harry, but the Slytherins. Then the Hufflepuffs stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them with their backs to Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Harry, awestruck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and from under sleeves.

Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons.

Without the quest, there can be no epiphany.

Patients with various other types of movement disorders may also be able to pick up the rhythmic movement or kinetic melody of an animal, so, for example, equestrian therapy may have startling effectiveness for people with parkinsonism, Tourette’s syndrome, chorea, or dystonia.

A luxury, once enjoyed, becomes a necessity.

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

The void created by the failure to communicate is soon filled with poison, drivel and misrepresentation.

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

To be brutally honest, for much of that time, I was the only person in the world with Parkinson's. Of course, I mean that in the abstract. I had become acutely aware of people around me who appears to have the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but as long as they didn't identify with me, I was in no rush to identify with them. My situation allowed, if not complete denial, at least a thick padding of insulation.

WHILE MUSIC alone can unlock people with parkinsonism, and movement or exercise of any kind is also beneficial, an ideal combination of music and movement is provided by dance (and dancing with a partner, or in a social setting, brings to bear other therapeutic dimensions).

Work gets done in the time available.

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

The more time you have to do things, the less you are able to get done.

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” still known as Parkinson’s Law.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” —Cyril Northcote Parkinson

Did you hear about Katie Parkinson? ... She's going out with Christopher... They've been kissing." "It was like a Semtex explosion in my brain. I did not know whether to cry or run away.

Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.

The solution is really simple: Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what. No holidays, no sick days. Don’t stop. What you’ll probably find is that the corollary to Parkinson’s Law is usually true: Work gets done in the time available.

James Parkinson. George Huntington. Robert Graves. John Down. Now this Lou Gehrig fellow of mine. How did men come to monopolize disease names too?” I blink and my mother blinks back, and then she is laughing and so am I. Even as I crumple inside.

the complex integration of the three secret senses: the labyrinthine, the proprioceptive, and the visual. It is this synthesis that is impaired in Parkinsonism. The

Like trapped animals struggling to break free. What a curse was sickness in old age. This damned Parkinson's, cruel as torture.

The only unavailable choice was whether or not to have Parkinson's. Everything else was up to me.

Mr Parkinson told him what was his due. “On your salary scale, the firm gives three months’ sick leave on full pay. Then if you are still unfit for work, another three months on half pay.

My doctor, who happens to be my old college roommate, tells me the Parkinson’s shouldn’t affect my golf game at all, which really surprised me. His explanation was very interesting. He said I’ve never been able to putt and since it was impossible for my putting to get any worse, there was actually a chance it might improve.

Set deadlines, and make them short. Parkinson’s Law states that your tasks will expand to take up the amount of time allotted for them. Shorten your personal deadlines and be amazed at how you complete all your tasks, regardless!

Dreams were for people who had some hope of making them come true.

I knew this guy he'd been in a motorcycle accident and it really ruined him and he was a linesman working on the power and he was working with someone who had Parkinsons so they both had complimentary inadeqacies and so two of them could do the job of one person so they're out there fixing powerlines in the freezing cold despite the fact that one was three quarters wrecked and the other one had Parkinsons That's how our civilization works, there's all these ruined people out there they've got problems like you can't believe, off they go to work to do things they don't even like and look! The Lights Are On

Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease; and they’ve been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating, and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers.

At first he found it amusing. He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson’s law that "The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite." It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work seemed dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat down and muddled about it long enough, sure enough, another hypothesis would come along. And it always did. It was only months after he had coined the law that he began to have some doubts about the humor or benefits of it. If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method! If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge

Depression can be due to a low endocrine function, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar problems, food allergies, or systemic yeast infection. Depression can also result from medical illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, cancer, Parkinson's disease, and hormonal disorder. It can also be caused by a serious loss, a difficult relationship, a financial problem, or any stressful, unwelcome life change.

The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' "Melissa," it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for yourself. I'd like to be optimistic, and I try to take care of my health, but none of my grandparents even made it past 76, three killed by cancer, one by Parkinson's disease. If I live no longer than any of them did, I have at most thirty years left, which puts me around sixty percent of the way through my time. I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It has been decades since I stopped believing-a belief that was never more than fitful and self-serving to begin with-in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I'm not totally certain where I stand on the whole "soul" question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, I'm inclined to disbelieve in its existence. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It's just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes over the side of my basket.

If you don’t drink coffee, you should think about two to four cups a day. It can make you more alert, happier, and more productive. It might even make you live longer. Coffee can also make you more likely to exercise, and it contains beneficial antioxidants and other substances associated with decreased risk of stroke (especially in women), Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Coffee is also associated with decreased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.12, 13 Any one of those benefits of coffee would be persuasive, but cumulatively they’re a no-brainer. An hour ago I considered doing some writing for this book, but I didn’t have the necessary energy or focus to sit down and start working. I did, however, have enough energy to fix myself a cup of coffee. A few sips into it, I was happier to be working than I would have been doing whatever lazy thing was my alternative. Coffee literally makes me enjoy work. No willpower needed. Coffee also allows you to manage your energy levels so you have the most when you need it. My experience is that coffee drinkers have higher highs and lower lows, energywise, than non–coffee drinkers, but that trade-off works. I can guarantee that my best thinking goes into my job, while saving my dull-brain hours for household chores and other simple tasks. The biggest downside of coffee is that once you get addicted to caffeine, you can get a “coffee headache” if you go too long without a cup. Luckily, coffee is one of the most abundant beverages on earth, so you rarely have to worry about being without it. Coffee costs money, takes time, gives you coffee breath, and makes you pee too often. It can also make you jittery and nervous if you have too much. But if success is your dream and operating at peak mental performance is something you want, coffee is a good bet. I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend it so strongly that I literally feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t developed the habit.

Gooddy refers here to “personal” time, as contrasted with “clock” time, and the extent to which personal time departs from clock time may become almost unbridgeable with the extreme bradykinesia common in postencephalitic parkinsonism. I would often see my patient Miron V. sitting in the hallway outside my office. He would appear motionless, with his right arm often lifted, sometimes an inch or two above his knee, sometimes near his face. When I questioned him about these frozen poses, he asked indignantly, “What do you mean, ‘frozen poses’? I was just wiping my nose.

Scientists induced Parkinson’s in rats by killing the dopamine cells in their basal ganglia, and then forced half of them to run on a treadmill twice a day in the ten days following the “onset” of the disease. Incredibly, the runners’ dopamine levels stayed within normal ranges and their motor skills didn’t deteriorate. In one study on people with Parkinson’s, intensive activity improved motor ability as well as mood, and the positive effects lasted for at least six weeks after they stopped exercising.

We have some very suggestive evidence that the use of pesticides and herbicides affects our mental function and brain physiology, including increasing the incidence of Parkinson’s disease up to seven times in those most heavily exposed to them. This is not exactly a surprise when we realize that pesticides are designed to be neurotoxic to the pests.

Then she felt herself, she said, to enter into the very bosom of God, where she was transformed into her Beloved, so completely that not all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil could ever separate her from His love...She gave them a conviction that she could find no pleasure on earth except in the contemplation of the divine mercy.

It is only when we let go of knowing what we think we know that new knowing can enter our lives.

The next time you are imagining the worst, look up the definition of imagination.

Parkinson’s Law: If you have only one letter to write, it will take all day to do it. If you have twenty letters to write, you’ll get them done in one day.

Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s law states that work will fill the time you set aside to do it.

Parkinson’s patients will release dopamine, sometimes even enough to control their involuntary movements, when they believe they’re getting real L-Dopa drug treatments.

Parkinson’s law says that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Malfoy got Hermione!” Ron said. “Look!” He forced Hermione to show Snape her teeth — she was doing her best to hide them with her hands, though this was difficult as they had now grown down past her collar. Pansy Parkinson and the other Slytherin girls were doubled up with silent giggles, pointing at Hermione from behind Snape’s back. Snape looked coldly at Hermione, then said, “I see no difference.” Hermione let out a whimper; her eyes filled with tears, she turned on her heel and ran, ran all the way up the corridor and out of sight.

The more I read on Parkinson’s, the more I discovered just how unwieldy and elusive it was; a sprawling tree of disease with each branch detailing a possible symptom or consequence.

Never has anyone milked a single thought more vigorously and successfully than he did. The line for which he is remembered was “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” still known as Parkinson’s Law. It was first elucidated in a comic essay he wrote for The Economist in 1955 while he was a professor at the University of Malaya in Singapore.

I needed a time machine. I needed to run around the past and gather up all the old, unbroken parts of me and try to Frankenstein myself back together again. My healthy body, my unjaded sixteen-year-old heart, my baby brain. I may not make such a pretty monster, but at least I'd feel like myself again.

How is it, Draco?” simpered Pansy Parkinson. “Does it hurt much?” “Yeah,” said Malfoy, putting on a brave sort of grimace. But Harry saw him wink at Crabbe and Goyle when Pansy had looked away. “Settle down, settle down,

Miss Parkinson lived alone in a big bay-windowed house of Edwardian brick with a vast garden of decaying fruit trees and untidy hedges of gigantic size. She was great at making elderberry wine and bottling fruit and preserves and lemon curd and drying flowers for winter. She felt, like Halibut, that things were not as they used to be. The synthetic curse of modern times lay thick on everything. There was everywhere a sad drift from Nature.

In 2001, families and caretakers of Parkinson’s patients began to notice something strange. When patients were given a drug called pramipexole, some of them turned into gamblers.8 And not just casual gamblers—pathological gamblers. These

Thomas B. Costain, Herman Wouk, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Kenneth Roberts, Edna Ferber, Sholem Asch, Ben Ames Williams, Frederic Wakeman, Frances Parkinson Keyes, Irwin Shaw, Budd Schulberg, Hamilton Basso, and, of course, Samuel Shellabarger.

Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, memory loss, and neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and ALS can all be prevented by fruit. That’s because not only does fruit prevent these diseases, it prevents oxidation—which is the process that ages us. It

Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, ‘SLYTHERIN!’ Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with himself. There weren’t many people left now. ‘Moon’ … ‘Nott’ … ‘Parkinson’ … then a pair of twin girls, ‘Patil’ and ‘Patil’ … then ‘Perks, Sally-Anne’ … and then, at last – ‘Potter, Harry!’ As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall. ‘Potter, did she say?’ ‘The Harry Potter?’ The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the Hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited. ‘Hmm,’ said a small voice in his ear. ‘Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes – and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting … So where shall I put you?’ Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, ‘Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.’ ‘Not Slytherin, eh?’ said the small voice. ‘Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that – no? Well, if you’re sure – better be GRYFFINDOR!

Fear is a bastard. Fear is an attention whore. I want to ask fear if it has mommy issues, because that’s the only reason I can think why it needs attention so bad. I want fear to get Parkinson’s. Then maybe fear will know how it feels to be on the run from something it doesn’t understand.

An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today’s apple contains residue of eleven different neurotoxins—azinphos, methyl chloripyrifos, diazinon, dimethoate, ethion, omthoate, parathion, parathion methyl, phosalone, and phosmet — and the USDA was testing for only one category of chemicals known as organophosphate insecticides. That doesn’t sound too appetizing does it? The average apple is sprayed with pesticides seventeen times before it is harvested.

The sword does not kill. The hand kills. The hand is the most beautiful part of a human being, and is capable of nearly infinitely other things than parting men from their ghosts. Once you touch the sword, a terrible tragedy will occur, and your hand will slowly lose this ability. Over time, it will cease to be a hand, and become a sword.

Sayre’s law, named after political scientist Wallace Sayre, offers that in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. A related concept is Parkinson’s law of triviality, named after naval historian Cyril Parkinson, which states that organizations tend to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.

Behold! The awesome fires of God. The limitless power of pure creation itself. Look carefully! Observe how it is used for the same purpose a man might use an especially sharp rock.

If you want to double your productively, shorten the timeline to by 50%.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law. But it’s not merely a joke, and it doesn’t apply only to work. It applies to everything that needs doing. In fact, it’s the definition of “what needs doing” that expands to fill the time available.

People with Parkinson’s are very lucky to have L-dopa. There is no equivalent therapy for other neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Whatever its limitations, L-dopa turned Parkinson’s from a condition in which victims experienced a rapid slide toward immobility and death into a chronic disease with a gradual trajectory of decline. A

Science is being corrupted by the influence of corporate money. This corruption is leading directly to our poor health, whether it be the epidemic of obesity; neurological diseases like autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis; the explosion of cancers; or mental problems among the young, including school shooters. There are some who claim this is leading to a culling, if not the mass extinction, of humanity.

realized while I was announcing myself to the group that I was conceding something profound: that the diagnosis marked an irreversible change in my identity, the moment that one version of me ended and another version

McKenzie once called Parkinsonism “an organized chaos,” and this is equally true of migraine. First there is chaos, then organization, a sick order; it is difficult to know which is worse! The nastiness of the first lies in its uncertainty, its flux; the nastiness of the second in its sense of immutable heavy permanence. Typically, indeed, treatment is only possible early, before migraine has “solidified” into immovable fixed forms.

COACHING TIPS • Give yourself permission to “waste” a little time. If you’re not spending 5 percent of your day building relationships, you’re doing something wrong. • Define your work hours and stick with them. Remember Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available.” This isn’t to say there won’t be times when you must work overtime, but if you’re consistently the last one left at the office, there’s something wrong with that picture.

PARODY OF "YOU'RE THE TOP" BY COLE PORTER You're the pop You're the baby's father You're the pop But you needn't bother I will make no claim to your ancient name at all When I let you make me You promised you'd take me to the city hall My mistake wasn't getting plastered, What a break for the little b***stard I was bad when I let you get on top But if baby I'm the momma, You're the pop! [Sung by Elaine Stritch when interviewed by Michael Parkinson on YouTube.

La crise de Parkinson de l’Histoire portait le nom de mondialisation. La traduction de ce phénomène dans nos vies quotidiennes mettait à notre disposition fruits et légumes tropicaux dans l’épicerie la plus modeste d’une campagne en marge. Une question venait alors : pourquoi n’acceptait-on pas qu’un voleur de pommes s’introduise dans un verger et pourquoi permettait-on à une mangue du Brésil de trôner dans une épicerie de l’Ardèche ? Où commençait l’infraction ?

1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.

Aren’t you scared of him?’ Amy asked, slumping down and trying to make herself inconspicuous. ‘He always looks so fierce. Don’t you remember that time he nearly caught us on his land? I was sure he’d give us a beating if he’d got hold of us.’ ‘Humph! My pa would have had something to say to him if he had.’ ‘That wouldn’t have been much comfort.’ ‘Yes, it would. Anyway, who’d be scared of him—sour old man like that.’ Lizzie dismissed Charlie Stewart with a wave of her hand.

Only once was there a question which YISUN hesitated to answer. Strangely enough, it was asked by Aesma, the least wise of their companions. They trode a stony road together, and Aesma’s feet grew hot and sore. She swore and spat, and clutched her feet, and asked YISUN a stupid question. “Lord!” said she, in roiling frustration, “Before you said there is no such thing as Universal Truth!” “It was so,” said YISUN. “Then what is all this! This foolery!” said Aesma, with an exaggerated sweep of her ashen arms, “Isn’t creation itself, the entirety of your own grand work, a self-evident truth? The only self evident truth, in fact!” “It is not so,” said YISUN, stopping their pace. “Then what is it?” wailed Aesma, starting to tantrum. This was the question that caused YISUN to hesitate. They meditated on it for a short time only, but Aesma was aghast with wonderment at the power of the question. “My opinion,” said YISUN, finally. “Is it a correct opinion?” said Aesma, awestruck. “Aesma is observant,” said YISUN.

But perhaps the newest and most exciting instrument in the neurologist’s tool kit is optogenetics, which was once considered science fiction. Like a magic wand, it allows you to activate certain pathways controlling behavior by shining a light beam on the brain. Incredibly, a light-sensitive gene that causes a cell to fire can be inserted, with surgical precision, directly into a neuron. Then, by turning on a light beam, the neuron is activated. More importantly, this allows scientists to excite these pathways, so that you can turn on and off certain behaviors by flicking a switch. Although this technology is only a decade old, optogenetics has already proven successful in controlling certain animal behaviors. By turning on a light switch, it is possible to make fruit flies suddenly fly off, worms stop wiggling, and mice run around madly in circles. Monkey trials are now beginning, and even human trials are in discussion. There is great hope that this technology will have a direct application in treating disorders like Parkinson’s and depression.

There is a parallel concept known as “movement reserve” that becomes relevant with Parkinson’s disease. People with better movement patterns, and a longer history of moving their bodies, such as trained or frequent athletes, tend to resist or slow the progression of the disease as compared to sedentary people. This is also why movement and exercise, not merely aerobic exercise but also more complex activities like boxing workouts, are a primary treatment/prevention strategy for Parkinson’s. Exercise is the only intervention shown to delay the progression of Parkinson’s.

ASPARTAME AND MSG: EXCITOTOXINS Aspartame is, in fact, an excitotoxin, one of a group of substances, usually acidic amino acids, that in high amounts react with specialized receptors in the brain, causing destruction of certain types of neurons. A growing number of neurosurgeons and neurologists are convinced that excitotoxins play a critical role in the development of several neurological disorders, including migraines, seizures, learning disorders in children, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).1 Glutamate and aspartate are two powerful amino acids that act as neurotransmitters in the brain in very small concentrations, but they are also commonly available in food additives. Glutamate is in MSG, a flavor enhancer, and in hydrolyzed vegetable protein, found in hundreds of processed foods. Aspartate is one of three components of aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), a sugar substitute. In higher concentrations as food additives, these chemicals constantly stimulate brain cells and can cause them to undergo a process of cell death known as excitotoxicity—the cells are excited to death.

Wherever the truth lies, in order to eliminate flicker, the rotating shutter within the projector has to allow each image to be flashed upon the screen twice. Thus, whenever we watch a movie, we spend half the time gazing at an optical illusion and the other half sitting in the dark in front of a blank screen.

The dramatic power of dopamine to interfere with free will and create sexual (and other) compulsions became clear when patients took drugs that imitate dopamine. For example, a Frenchman who took such a drug to control Parkinson’s symptoms recovered a large settlement from a pharmaceutical company after the medication temporarily gave him compulsive homosexual urges. (He was straight when not on the meds.)192 Another Parkinson’s patient suddenly found himself cross-dressing after seventy years of uneventful heterosexuality. When doctors decreased his dosage of the dopamine-like drug, the urge to put on his deceased wife’s clothing evaporated.

Slapstick was named after the battacio, or 'slap stick,' which made a dramatic popping sound when actors hit one another with it and which was used in the Commedia dell'arte, an Italian stage tradition whose blend of stereotype, sketch and shtick was passed down through circus and pantomime to vaudeville and burlesque and into cinema

How often are people told they’ve brought a condition like depression upon themselves? It’s all part of mercury’s blame-the-victim game. Those depressive symptoms are the mercury speaking for the patient without her or his consent. Sometimes mercury moves past the hostage phase and takes someone out, resulting in death by Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, or stroke. It’s that serious. Mercury has injured or killed well over a billion people. No one likes Alzheimer’s; it’s a frightening, terrible disease. Yet it’s rapidly becoming common—and it’s 100 percent mercury-caused. You heard that here first: Mercury is 100 percent responsible for Alzheimer’s disease. You will never in your lifetime hear the truth about that anywhere else.

Tenga en cuenta que todas las generaciones anteriores han actuado bajo el supuesto de que poseían todas las herramientas importantes para comprender el universo, y todas se equivocaban, sin excepción. Imagine que intenta construir una teoría del arco iris antes de comprender la óptica, o intenta comprender el rayo antes de conocer la electricidad, o abordar la enfermedad de Parkinson antes de descubrir los neurotransmisores. ¿Parece razonable pensar que somos los primeros que han tenido la suerte de nacer en la generación perfecta, una generación que por fin ha alcanzado una ciencia integral? ¿O parece más probable creer que dentro de cien años la gente pensará en nosotros y se preguntará cómo podíamos vivir ignorando lo que ellos saben?

Life is not meant to be a montage of catastrophes. It’s also not a giant prison, and neither are these bizarre, meaty casings we are housed in for the time being. And they’d make terrible ones anyway. These bodies aren’t exactly built to last. They get sick and get old and fall apart. But truth is, the me that is me is not the sick one here. And I refuse to feel imprisoned.

The company takes a strong view against psychotherapy for executives because it denotes unhappiness, and unhappiness is a disgraceful social disease for which there is no excuse or forgiveness. Cancer, pernicious anemia, and diabetes are just fine, and even people with multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease may continue to go far in the company until they are no longer allowed to go on at all. But unhappiness is fatal. If my daughter or son were to commit suicide, that would be overlooked, because children do things like that, and that's the way kids are. But if my wife were to jump to her death without a prior record of psychiatric disturbance, did it only because she was unhappy, my chances for further advancement would be over. I'd be ruined.

While L-dopa was vastly superior to what came before, the drug fell far short of being a cure. On the one hand, the L-dopa allowed “frozen” wheelchair-bound individuals to walk again and increased patients’ life expectancy. On the other hand, virtually all patients taking levodopa were sentenced to future disabling motor complications. And that’s as true today as it was in 1970.

Tell you what: Ask a Baptist wife why her husband treats her like a personal slave. Ask a homosexual couple why their love for one another is treated as a sick joke in some parts of the world and as a crime punishable by death in others. Ask a starving African mother with ten starving children why she doesn't practice birth control. Ask a young Muslim girl why her parents sliced off her clitoris. Ask millions of Muslim women why they cannot attend schools or show themselves in public except through the eye slits of a full-body burqa. Ask the Pakistani woman who's gang-raped why she is sentenced to death while her rapists go free, and why it’s her own family leading the murderous chorus. Ask the American woman who’s raped why her local congressman would question the “legitimacy” of that rape and would force her to bring her rapist’s child to term. Ask the dead Christian children why their fundamentalist parents wouldn’t give them an antibiotic to stave off their infection or an insulin injection to control their diabetes. Ask the Parkinson’s or paralysis victims why their cures have been mired in religious and political red tape for decades now because an increasingly hysterical and radical segment of American society believes that a clump of cells with no identity and no consciousness has more rights than they do. Ask them all to point to the source of their misery, and then ask yourself why it doesn't bother you that they are pointing to the same goddamned book you're using in your religious services and in the celebration of your “harmless” and “quaint” traditions.

Specifically, damage to the left hemisphere can free up the creative capabilities of the right hemisphere. More generally, when one neural circuit in the brain is turned off, another circuit, which was inhibited by the inactivated circuit, may turn on. Scientists have also uncovered some surprising links between disorders that appear to be unrelated because they are characterized by dramatically different kinds of behavior. Several disorders of movement and of memory, such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, result from misfolded proteins. The symptoms of these disorders vary widely because the particular proteins affected and the functions for which they are responsible differ. Similarly, both autism and schizophrenia involve synaptic pruning, the removal of excess dendrites on neurons. In autism, not enough dendrites are pruned, whereas in schizophrenia too many are.

His eyes fell instead on the girl next to Krum. His jaw dropped. It was Hermione. But she didn’t look like Hermione at all. She had done something with her hair; it was no longer bushy but sleek and shiny, and twisted up into an elegant knot at the back of her head. She was wearing robes made of a floaty, periwinkle-blue material, and she was holding herself differently, somehow — or maybe it was merely the absence of the twenty or so books she usually had slung over her back. She was also smiling — rather nervously, it was true — but the reduction in the size of her front teeth was more noticeable than ever; Harry couldn’t understand how he hadn’t spotted it before. “Hi, Harry!” she said. “Hi, Parvati!” Parvati was gazing at Hermione in unflattering disbelief. She wasn’t the only one either; when the doors to the Great Hall opened, Krum’s fan club from the library stalked past, throwing Hermione looks of deepest loathing. Pansy Parkinson gaped at her as she walked by with Malfoy, and even he didn’t seem to be able to find an insult to throw at her. Ron, however, walked right past Hermione without looking at her.

The connection between dopamine and belief was established by experiments conducted by Peter Brugger and his colleague Christine Mohr at the University of Bristol in England. Exploring the neurochemistry of superstition, magical thinking, and belief in the paranormal, Brugger and Mohr found that people with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none. In one study, for example, they compared twenty self-professed believers in ghosts, gods, spirits, and conspiracies to twenty self-professed skeptics of such claims. They showed all subjects a series of slides consisting of people’s faces, some of which were normal while others had their parts scrambled, such as swapping out eyes or ears or noses from different faces. In another experiment, real and scrambled words were flashed. In general, the scientists found that the believers were much more likely than the skeptics to mistakenly assess a scrambled face as real, and to read a scrambled word as normal. In the second part of the experiment, Brugger and Mohr gave all forty subjects L-dopa, the drug used for Parkinson’s disease patients that increases the levels of dopamine in the brain. They then repeated the slide show with the scrambled or real faces and words. The boost of dopamine caused both believers and skeptics to identify scrambled faces and real and jumbled words as normal. This suggests that patternicity may be associated with high levels of dopamine in the brain. Intriguingly, the effect of L-dopa was stronger on skeptics than believers. That is, increased levels of dopamine appear to be more effective in making skeptics less skeptical than in making believers more believing.8 Why? Two possibilities come to mind: (1) perhaps the dopamine levels of believers are already higher than those of skeptics and so the latter will feel the effects of the drug more; or (2) perhaps the patternicity proclivity of believers is already so high that the effects of the dopamine are lower than those of skeptics. Additional research shows that people who profess belief in the paranormal—compared to skeptics—show a greater tendency to perceive “patterns in noise,”9 and are more inclined to attribute meaning to random connections they believe exist.

COULD IT BE B12 DEFICIENCY? The neurological symptoms of B12 deficiency that occur in young and middle-aged people are very similar to those in older people. They include the following: • Numbness, tingling, or burning sensations of the hands, feet, extremities, or truncal area, often misdiagnosed as diabetic neuropathy or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) • Tremor, often misdiagnosed as essential tremor or pre-Parkinson’s disease • Muscle weakness, paresthesias, and paralysis, sometimes attributed to Guillain-Barré syndrome • Pain, fatigue, and debility, often labeled as “chronic fatigue syndrome” • “Shaky leg” syndrome (leg trembling) • Confusion and mental fogginess, often misdiagnosed as early-onset dementia • Unsteadiness, dizziness, and paresthesias, often misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis • Weakness of extremities, clumsiness, muscle cramps, twitching, or foot drop, often misdiagnosed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) • Psychiatric symptoms, such as depression or psychosis (covered in greater length in the next chapter) • Visual disturbances, vision loss, or blindness In contrast, a doctor ignorant about the effects of B12 deficiency can destroy a patient’s life. The

The ability to draw a connection between two things that had previously appeared to be unrelated is an important part of creativity, and it appears that it can be enhanced by electrical stimulation. Compared to participants who were given fake tDCS, those who got electricity created more unusual analogies—that is, analogies between things that seemed very unlike one another. Nevertheless, these highly creative analogies were just as accurate as the more obvious ones created by the participants whose devices were secretly turned off. Dopaminergic drugs can do the same thing. Although some patients who take dopaminergic drugs for Parkinson’s disease develop devastating compulsions, others experience enhanced creativity. One patient who came from a family of poets had never done any creative writing. After starting dopamine-boosting drugs for his Parkinson’s disease, he wrote a poem that won the annual contest of the International Association of Poets. Painters treated with Parkinson’s medication often increase their use of vivid color. One patient who developed a new style after being treated said, “The new style is less precise but more vibrant. I have a need to express myself more. I just let myself go.” Just like Winnie-the-Pooh: “It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come.

I know that you are preparing to fight." There were screams amongst the students, some of whom clutched each other, looking around in terror for the source of the sound. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood." There was silence in the Hall now, the kind of silence that presses against the eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained by walls. "Give me Harry Potter," said Voldemort's voice, "and they shall not be harmed.Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded. "You have until midnight." The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him forever in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, "But he's there! Potter's there. Someone grab him!" Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The Gryffindors in front of him had risen and stood facing, not Harry, but the Slytherins. Then the Hufflepuffs stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them with their backs to Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Harry, awestruck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and from under sleeves. "Thank you, Miss Parkinson." said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice."You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow.

I have referred to it as a gift--something for which others with this affliction have taken me to task. I was only speaking from my own experience, of course, but I stand partially corrected: if it is a gift, it's the gift that just keeps on taking. Coping with relentless assault and the accumulating damage is not easy. Nobody would ever choose to have this visited upon them. Still, this unexpected crisis forced a fundamental life decision: adopt a siege mentality--or embark upon a journey. Whatever it was--courage? acceptance? wisdom?--that finally allowed me to go down the second road (after spending a few disastrous years on the first) was unquestionably a gift--and absent this neurophysiological catastrophe, I would never have opened it, or been so profoundly enriched. That's why I consider myself a lucky man.

Once, on the road, Prim met a meditating sage who had spent most of his life on top of a flat rock. They had black bread and shared some ajash, as was custom. The sage was thankful, as the road was not very frequently traveled in those days and he was very near the point of starvation. During his conversation, he was delighted to learn of Prim’s extensive mastery of Empty Palms and the fifty five earthly purities. Delighted, and as payment for his meal, he taught Prim the meaning of watchfulness. This was the old breathing and cold-atum technique often used by warrior monks in those days. It ran through the following methodology: Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior. “Why build the tower this way?” said Prim? “It will make you invincible,” said the sage, “This is the way of Ya-at slave monks. Their skin is like iron, and so are their hearts. They are inured to death and fear. Grief shall never find them, and neither shall weakness.” Prim thought a moment, and came upon a realization, for she was wise, obedient, and an excellent daughter. “If a man built a tower this way, he would quickly starve, no matter how strong he became.” The sage was even more delighted. “Yes,” he said, “There is a better way, and I will teach it to you: Once you have built your tower, you must deconstruct it, brick by brick, stone by stone. You must do it meticulously and carefully, so that while you leave no physical trace of it remaining, your tower is still built in your mind and your heart, ready to spring anew at a moment’s notice. You can enjoy the fresh air, and eat fine meals, and enjoy a good drink with your friends, but all the while your tower remains standing. You are both prisoner and warden. This is the hardest way, but the strongest.” Prim saw the wisdom in this, and quickly made to return to the road, but the sage stopped her before she left. “As you to your earlier remark,” the sage said, “The man who builds his tower but cannot take it apart again – that man is at the pinnacle of his strength. But that man will surely perish.” – Prim Masters the Road