Here is the book review for the new book on Parkinson's (search for "Lilian Sjoeberg" on your local amazon and the book should come up).
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Stuck on Pause with Parkinson's Disease
Indeed, I was recently contacted on this topic by Dave Faller, a person with a PD diagnosis, who has been exploring ways to help himself. Dave has written a very useful two page summary of Janice’s “Stuck on Pause” book and other work, and so I asked him if we could reproduce it here. He agreed, and hence the article below.
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Fascia Decompression and Parkinson's Disease
Thiamine and Parkinson's Disease
What was needed was for someone to gather and review all the research done on HDT for PD so far, collect all the anecdotes of what has and hasn’t worked for individuals with PD, and to resurrect as much of Dr C.'s knowledge, experiences and wisdom as possible. Then to pull it together and come up with a working plan or a guidebook for other people with PD to follow in order to try to optimize HDT the potential benefits of for themselves.
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Early Retirement and Parkinson's Disease
By Florencia Cerruti, person with Parkinson’s Disease and author of Rebirth at 50: in the end, it was not The End.
Very shortly after my diagnosis of Parkinson's disease at age forty seven, I asked a neurologist how long I should work. His answer was: "Until the last day that the disease allows it." His words echoed within me: what would happen that day? Would I be the one to decide or would it be my colleagues and bosses at work who would warn me before I had the chance to decide? What would the signal be? In any case, what would it be like to work until the last day the disorder would allow me to?
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Motivation, Pleasure, Pain and Parkinson's Disease
The activation of the habenula inhibits or deactivates the dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area, and, conversely excites or activates them when it is deactivated. This has profound implications for PD, as this points to the possibility that it is not cell death which causes the issues in PD, but chronic activation of the habenula permanently switching off the cells in the substantia nigra from producing dopamine. This is a more hopeful hypothesis, as it means the cells are just dormant, not dead. If we can figure out how to deactivate the habenula, this could provide significant symptom reduction.
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Relationships and Parkinson's Disease
This series of articles includes many self-help tips on how to potentially improve/prevent further atrophy of the cranial nerve functions, to try to increase “vagal tone”. The hope is to delay, or even reverse, the losses of facial expression, light in the eyes, melody in the voice, and ability to listen, all of which can impact significantly on other people’s chances at being able to relate to us, as well as our own ability to read with veracity the social cues coming from others.
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Sleep and Parkinson's Disease
In this article, we consider the role of sleep on PD symptoms. I believe that getting good sleep is absolutely foundational, on which all other progressive symptom reduction strategies rest. Indeed, Florencia Cerruti, author of Rebirth at 50: in the end it was not The End, points out that poor sleep, along with stress, is to people with PD like Kryptonite is to Superman. Unfortunately, sleep problems are extremely common with PD.
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Eating Habits and Parkinson's Disease
This continues a series of posts which reframe major aspects of Parkinson’s Disease as habitual behaviours rather than symptoms. These are features of the condition which can be addressed and changed over time in order to assist with progressive symptom reduction. In this article, we consider eating and PD, but while there is a lot of literature on diets and supplements relevant to the condition, here we consider that the how and when we eat may be just as important or even more so than what we eat.
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Shared Experiences and Parkinson's Disease
When Florencia Cerruti was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease at age 47, she began using journaling, writing down her private thoughts about her experiences, as a coping mechanism and a therapeutic outlet. Through this self-reflection, she realizes early that there is some innate element of bodily wisdom in the diagnosis of an "idiopathic" chronic condition - that it contains an aspect of her body saying "no more" to a lifetime of holding herself to too high standards, of perfectionism, of "wearing the cape of superwoman".
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Breathing Disorders and Parkinson's Disease
Some of the common “symptoms” of Parkinson’s Disease could be reframed as behavioural patterns contributing to overall symptomology, but which can be ameliorated through appropriate retraining to help with progressive symptom reduction. Examples of such retrainable “habits” include issues with posture, mindset and breathing. These patterns tend to impact each other, for example habitual mouth breathing can result in the forward head position common in PD. People with PD will often see in hindsight that, once identified, these problematic habits were apparent years before diagnosis. In this article, we specifically consider how unhealthy, but fixable, breathing patterns could be an exacerbating factor in PD. We will cover how poor breathing interacts with, and may even be causal of, many other symptoms, and explore what we can do to improve our quality of life by taking action to retrain our breath.
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Music Therapy and Parkinson's Disease
I have played piano since the age of seven and taught music all my life, so it is not surprising that my mobility problems initially became evident to me while playing the piano. I had been asked to demonstrate a new piano, which the local church was considering buying, but while playing I found that I could not move the fingers of my right-hand as quickly as those of my left. For the next eighteen months doctors and physios gave me various diagnoses from trapped nerve to dystonia. When I finally consulted a neurologist, the diagnosis of Parkinson’s was a complete shock.
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Feeling Safe and Parkinson's Disease
This article seeks to convey pragmatic and applicable knowledge of the human nervous system to people affected by Parkinson’s Disease and those involved in providing healthcare and caregiving, as well as to try to summarize for myself my own current understandings of these concepts. In particular, we explore the role of people, attitudes and relationships in the lived experience of people with PD.
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Chronic Stress and Parkinson's Disease
Some time ago, I discovered the strong correspondence between the symptoms of stress and the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. Later, I found these conclusions were further strongly supported by the book “When the Body Says No” by Dr Gabor Mate. I highly recommend everyone with, or is involved with, Parkinson’s Disease read this book at least once.
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Brain Healing and Parkinson's Disease
Here are annotated excerpts from the book, on the stages of neuroplastic healing - according to Dr Doidge, this works by modulating or downregulating the abnormal and noisy brain wave activity which occurs in nervous system dysregulations, that are either blocking clear movement and sensory signals or are over-exciting pain responses. It is worth noting that such “noisy brain” problems have been identified as a key element of Parkinson’s Disease.
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Fascia (Connective Tissue) and Parkinson's Disease
We discover that fascia is essentially the connective tissue which is found throughout our body, wrapping muscles and organs, nerves and bones. This connective tissue is incredibly important and has profound and primary roles in our biological system, health and wellness. This is an “emerging” field in medicine, but has been known about and worked with in other disciplines for a very long time.
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Dance Therapy for Parkinson's Disease
Of all the therapies and modalities we’ve discussed here, I believe the most beneficial overall for progressive symptom reduction and movement recovery are Dance based. Here we define Dance Therapy broadly and simply as “moving to music or a beat”
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The Divided Brain and Parkinson's Disease, Part 2
In this sequel, we examine more closely the issues that an imbalanced brain function causes, in particular when the left brain is overly dominant, and show that there are strong correlations with the major motor and non-motor symptoms and real lives of people with Parkinson’s Disease. We will also explore links to Dorsal Vagus Nerve mediated immobilization.
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The Dorsal Vagus Nerve and Parkinson's Disease
In this article, I would like to return to this topic, and concentrate this time on that primitive, reptilian branch of the Vagus Nerve, and its potentially central role in Parkinson's Disease.
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The Divided Brain and Parkinson's Disease, Part 1
I have since been considering what Iain McGilchrist’s “Divided Brain” work has to teach us, in the context of trauma and chronic illness, and seeking to employ both hemispheres of my brain in thinking about this. I began to see how Iain’s work provides us with a vital missing part of the puzzle. Indeed, his concept of the "Divided Brain", I now feel, connects so very many of the pieces, and I will endeavour to contexualize and map out my thinking on this here.