Positive Parkinson's Disease Quotes

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.

Although I owned a boat, I had no sonar, metal detector or any practical method of surveying the ocean bottom. With an incurable illness, no prospect of financial reward, little chance of success, brain surgery looming, and one child in college with another about to start, I was not in a position to spend thousands of dollars on a search. Still, desperate for a distraction, anything to pry my focus away from the disease, I decided—the hell with Parkinson’s. I’m doing it.

Medical Benefits of Fasting Here are a few medical benefits from an article from John Hopkins Health Review Spring Summer 2016. Mark Mattson is a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and also serves as chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. According to the research conducted by him and others, cutting your energy intake by fasting several days a week might help your brain ward off neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s while at the same time improving memory and mood. Mattson explains that every time you eat, glucose is stored in your liver as glycogen, which takes about 10 to 12 hours to be depleted. After the glycogen is used up, your body starts burning fats, which are converted to ketone bodies, acidic chemicals used by neurons as energy. Ketones promote positive changes in the structure of synapses important for learning, memory, and overall brain health. But if you eat three meals a day with snacks between, your body doesn’t have the chance to deplete the glycogen stores in your liver, and the ketones aren’t produced.

in making neurotransmitters, the pathways that neurons travel on. The major breakthrough is the fact that the brain becomes insulin resistant. A substance in coconut oil and palm oil called MCT. When the oil is metabolized, it created ketones which could protect the brain from Alzheimer's, it may reverse the disease. It has been tested as possible treatments for Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis and amotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS, or Lou Gherig's disease). There have been some positive results with coconut oil. With further research, there may be a cure for disease that takes so much away from those stricken with the diseases.

There is a movement afoot using improvisational theatre to help people and improve lives in a wide variety of contexts. Therapists with a background in improvisational theatre have begun to incorporate it into their work, and they’re seeing positive results, particularly in the treatment of anxiety. Improvisation is also correlated with improved academic performance in the classroom, and for decades improvisers have worked with patients with serious mental illness. Preliminary studies have shown enhanced daily functioning in patients with Parkinson’s disease who practice improvisational techniques. Improvisation has also been shown to increase well-being in patients with dementia.

One of the early discoveries in neuroscience that helped to rekindle the field’s interest in habit came from a 1990s study that separated habit learning in humans from conscious understanding. Twenty participants had Parkinson’s disease, which attacks motor control systems in the basal ganglia, especially the putamen, and impedes the ability to learn new habits (even non-motor ones) and to activate old ones. Twelve participants were patients with amnesia who had dysfunction in a different brain area (the hippocampus), one that interfered with their ability to remember recent events. Parkinson’s patients could explain the task and the instructions. They knew consciously what to do. But it didn’t matter how much they practiced. They could not learn the connections between cues (cards) and rewarded responses (rain/sun forecast). They could not form a habit. In contrast, the amnesiacs acquired habits more readily as they practiced the task. After taking fifty chances at predicting the weather, they could make accurate forecasts based on the cards. But when they were asked about what they were doing, they could not remember the instructions or details of what they had seen. This research provided some of the first insights into the neural mechanics of habit formation. It suggested that, in humans, habit learning isn’t superseded or subordinated by more thoughtful learning systems, as assumed by many researchers during the cognitive revolution. Habits live in resilient, deep-seated neural structures—ones that are fundamental to mammalian life.