Here’s a sample of links to Gut Microbiota For Health’s website and some of the research articles they’ve published, mostly in the last year. One talks about the linkage between certain bacteria and motor system disorders, another about relief for constipation for Parkinson’s patients, Another is a compilation of several articles, and finally, an article that explores the gut to brain relation regarding Parkinson’s, and to top it all off, the relationship of the bacteria in your stomach to the chemicals in your brain, and how the various microbial communities communicate. Life goes on within you and without you, it would seem.
Tag Archives: Parkinson’s
Genetic risk for Early Onslaught Parkinson’s upped by PINK1 variation
Single mutation in recessive gene increases risk of earlier onset Parkinson’s disease
“A collaboration of 32 researchers in seven countries, led by scientists at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Florida, has found a genetic mutation they say confers a risk for development of Parkinson’s disease earlier than usual.
The major study, published in Brain, is important because the risk comes from a single mutation in the PTEN-induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1) gene. Investigators had believed that this rare form of Parkinson’s developed only when a person inherited mutations in both PINK1 alleles (one from each parent).”
You can download a copy of the original research article at this link: Heterozygous PINK1 p.G411S increases risk of Parkinson’s disease via a dominant-negative mechanism
Standing up can reveal cognitive difficulties.
Unmasking cognitive deficits by standing up
Published at the end of November 2016, the linked article found that folks with orthostatic hypotension revealed more cognitive deficits on standing up than when measured sitting down or lying down.
Since most cognitive tests are administered while the subject is sitting or lying down, cognitive difficulties faced in day to day living might be underestimated.
Participants with PD and OH were far more susceptible to posture-related impairment on several tests, including those that measured math skills, the ability to produce words easily, keeping information in mind while working on it, paying sufficient attention so that later memory is efficient and searching for items quickly and accurately.
Will Parkinson’s be diagnosed by a simple sample of blood in the near future?
A step towards more accurate diagnoses of Parkinson’s and other similar neurological diseases was recently reported in Nature. And by CNN which picked up the story: Parkinsons disease blood test study
Up until now, many diseases have been diagnosed based on symptoms, with patients asking, “How do you know I have this?” Meanwhile, doctors are not always correct, Wright said. This is true even of Parkinson’s, which is diagnosed based on symptoms, a patient’s history, neurological exams, a patient’s response to medicine and, in some cases, brain imaging tests.
As a person with Parkinson’s among other conditions, related or unrelated, this would be a big deal. When a diagnosis is based on having a specific array of symptoms, some of which might not be present in all cases (tremors, for instance), one wonders whether medications for reducing certain symptoms might not prevent the presentation of all the symptoms required for a diagnosis of Parkinson’s.
It does me little good to play “what if” since one doesn’t know how one would have reacted to an earlier diagnosis at an earlier age. One can only refer to Victor Frankl’s work on the search for meaning in our lives, and approach the present as though one has already been at this decision point and are being given a second chance to make a decision just as wrong as the original decision. At least that’s how I remember that particular quote. Here’s another quote from Frankl:
the meaning of life always changes, but that it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different
ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or
encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable
suffering. The first, the way of achievement or accomplishment, is quite obvious.
A YouTube playlist to sing along and move to for Parkinson’s People
One of the best things about music for PD people is that it helps to get you moving. Here’s a playlist of some favorite rhythms and melodies from YouTube for your own music therapy – self prescribed and self administered.
Contributing data for scientific research
Got my genome sequenced by the folks at 23andMe, and consented to having my data used in research studies. As a result, some new genetic sites have been identified through the sifting of the aggregate data of other folks like or unlike me.
We humans are pattern identifying organisms. So if you have Parkinson’s but not one of the gene mutations/variations known to “cause” the disease, it is only natural that we would look for correlations and associations that might also result in Parkinsonism. So scientists mine the DNA data of thousands of people with Parkinson’s and find some additional markers
DNA and Parkinson’s – discovery by association
Not having been trained in the field, I think in broader terms – for instance, if 50% of depression diagnoses eventually become PD cases, and 25% of essential tremor cases result in Parkinson’s cases, doesn’t it stand to reason that a person with depression and essential tremors will have a greater than 50% chance of developing Parkinson’s, assuming their lifetime is long enough? Or would it be greater than 75%? It would be interesting to see a Venn diagram of overlapping diagnoses…
Dance for Parkinson’s – some links/citations
Just posting some links to materials on dance as therapy.
MJFF blog Feb 1, on Dance for Parkinson’s
… The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) has recently highlighted two researchers,
Dr Richard Coaten and Sara Houston, studying the effects of dance and movement upon
patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. …
Dr Richard Coaten and Sara Houston, studying the effects of dance and movement upon
patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. …
Dance therapy: a new approach to minimising the impact of ailments caused by old age
A Guillaume – Perspectives in Public Health, 2017
Descending to the transcendent: Reversing the direction of an upside down life in a both/and world
VL Curtis – 2016
… Symptoms of the disease mimic degenerative conditions such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis,
diabetes, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and multiple sclerosis. … They are the ego and daimon as
complementary partners within a divine dance of an ordered system appearing as chaos. …
diabetes, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, and multiple sclerosis. … They are the ego and daimon as
complementary partners within a divine dance of an ordered system appearing as chaos. …
Addressing Security and Privacy Challenges in Internet of Things
A Mosenia – 2017
… They are also used to help patients who su er from serious neurological conditions, eg,
Parkinsons disease or post-stroke condition [53]. … Salarian et al. [57] proposed a method for
enhancing the gait of a patient with Parkinsons. 16. disease. Hester et al. …
Parkinsons disease or post-stroke condition [53]. … Salarian et al. [57] proposed a method for
enhancing the gait of a patient with Parkinsons. 16. disease. Hester et al. …
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A Good ole Boy a’Dancin an’ a’Prancin’ Again
This just came in: A physiotherapist in Oklahoma has discovered gait training with the use of favorite music and posted the anecdotal results as a video on Facebook. I remember my first experience with Dance for Parkinson’s and how it got me swinging my arms to the rhythm. Recently found that Walk Like A Man reminds me to get my shoulders back and my head up, instead of stooping over like Quasimodo. (YouTube of WLAM below).
Someone needs to put together a playlist on YouTube of Gait Training For Parkinson’s videos and songs. Who will beat me to it? Bueller? Bueller?
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To dance beneath the diamond sky
“To dance beneath the diamond sky“. photo of Clematis drummondii by Robert Kamper. All rights reserved.
Something not really research related: An article in the St. Paul – Minneapolis ParkBugle about a Women’s Drumming Center. But for anyone dealing with stress, the quotes from teachers and students speak volumes about the power of community and rhythms. People with Parkinson’s could do worse than follow this lead. ( I happen to have a warm-up protocol for a Parkinson’s music group I was in that begins with beating a drum and progresses to call and responses rhythms, much like this group).
Over at University of Michigan’s blog, Victor Kartch reports on anecdotal and scientific evidence on the uses of music as medicine in his January 11, 2017, Health Yourself column. He does list some references, as well as listing some of the conditions for which music has been used as therapy with positive results. Slight quibble: music therapy is used here in a very broad and loosely defined sense, which does not bother me, but might be viewed negatively by professionals in the business of music therapy, where a stricter definition of music therapy as a specific prescription for a specific symptom or condition might be considered the norm.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has an article titled “Move your arm like a swan” reporting on Dance for PD and the “demedicalization” (my spell checker doesn’t think that’s a word) of Parkinson’s. The full article is free and there is also a link to download a copy of the article in PDF. A related article on a Google Glass app that uses augmented reality is also linked to, is available for free, and has a link to download the full article in PDF. It’s like Christmas in January!
Not just a “last resort”- Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) works for early stages of PD symptoms, too.
Science marches on. Researchers found evidence that DBS is helpful in early stages of PDS, not just in later stages. Benefits extend for at least 5 years:
BALTIMORE — Patients with Parkinson’s disease treated with deep-brain stimulation (DBS) in the early stage of disease show significant improvements in motor skills extending out to 5 years of follow-up, offering encouraging, though preliminary, evidence that the known benefits seen in advanced and midstage disease could also apply to earlier stages.
“We found that not only is DBS combined with medicine better than medicine alone, but we have this longitudinal data showing a sustained benefit for 5 years,” senior author David Charles, MD, professor and vice-chairman of neurology and chief medical officer of the Vanderbilt Neuroscience Institute at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville, Tennessee, told Medscape Medical News.
“Even with these small numbers of patients, the separation favoring DBS is dramatic, so this is very encouraging,” he said.
The PDF copy of the research paper referenced in the above news article can be found at this link:
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bob's brain: living well with a movement disorder and other comorbidities 