This is the website that did not come up in my previous post:
Mind over Medication: This is the website... - Cure Parkinson's
Mind over Medication
Written by
JohnPepper
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27 Replies
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Excellent video!
you wouldn't happen to have the cliffs notes version would you?
No! Sorry.
Thanks, JohnPepper Very thought-provoking, I listened while paying bills, so my amygdala was fully engaged! Add to that, I was watching a documentary on a celebrity's untimely demise. lots of good info, thanks to Xenos for the Abstract!
Thanks John love it!
Thank you for sharing.
Abstract :
- Question to ask yourself: What does my body need in order to heal? (quitting my job, dumping my spouse, etc)
- The body repairs itself, but only when in relaxation mode – not in stress mode. This explains the healing effect of going to a trusted doctor.
Physical measures :
- More vegetables diet;
-Taking supplements that you deeply believe will help;
Stress related measures :
- Alleviate your loneliness;
- Alleviate work stress;
- Alleviate financial stress;
… do whatever calm down the amygdala, and hence the stress responses.
Bottom line, Six steps to healing :
- Believe it's possible;
- Find the right support: the right healer, someone who believes you can heal yourself;
- Listen to your intuition: what calms my amygdala? Answer the question "what does my body needs in order to heal?";
- Diagnose yourself: identify the issues (same question);
- Write yourself the prescription – and actually take action;
- Surrender ('cause it doesn't always work).
I mention stress very strongly in my book and tell readers that I decided to give up my job running a large company, which my wife and I had founded in 1970. The company had got too large for me to manage and I had to hand it over to professional managers, who then made a mess of it.
After having given up my job, my daily routine was to go to the gym at 5-30 am for 90 minutes and then have a shower and come back home for breakfast. After my wife had gone to work, I sat in a reclining chair and turned on my favourite music and proceeded to read a book. I intended to make up for all those years of hard slog, sometimes working up to 24 hours a day,and never less than 12. I had always taken weekends off to be with the family, but other than then, I never saw my family.
What happened in practice was that I often fell asleep in that chair and slept even less at night. While I worked I was averaging less than 4 hours a night, and after giving up my job I was sleeping even less.
Why am I telling you all this? After two years of "Relaxing" and going to the gym, my performance at the gym was was worse very quickly. Quicker than it had before diagnosis. I had been told by my neurologist that it will get worse but I didn't think it would get worse so quickly. So I decided to give up the gym, as it wasn't doing me any good.
Having given up the gym, my late wife urged me to join RUN/WALK for LIFE, a program for getting fit. She had been doing this for over 2 years and had lost 14 kilograms in weight and had come off her blood pressure and antidepressant pills and she was feeling better than she had ever been before. I could not see how walking for 3 hours a week could be better than exercising in the gym for 9 hours a week, which included running on the treadmill for 20 minutes every day. She said she did not know, but it had helped many other people to get well again. We argued about it for 3 months and eventually I gave in and joined Walk for Life, just to show her that she was wrong!
Guess what? After only 4 months my performance had improved from over 10.5 minutes per kilometre, when I joined, to less than 9 minutes. That was the first time my performance at anything had improved over the previous 15 years.
That is when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. After 4 years my times had improved to less than 6 and three quarter minutes a kilometre and many of my had disappeared. Nobody would ever have known that I still had Pd.
So just doing what is mentioned in the video, namely getting rid of everything that was stressing me, and eating properly etc, was not doing anything to improve my Pd. It was only when I started the fast walking that my Pd started to get better. It would not have got better if I had not given up my job and started to relax, at least I don't think so. Had I not started the walking then I don't think the Pd would have got better.
Draw your own conclusions!
A story about depression, not necessarily PD. DYou certainly needed time to heal by removing stress, fresh air and exercise,. Selegiline with its antidepressant properties probably helped too.
Yes! It took 10 years before I got to the position I have been in since 2002. I still get periods of depression and I still get mood changes. Each time I am found to be in depression I have to go through the process of finding the possible cause and working out what steps I need to take to remove that cause. Like dealing with some very viscous attacks on HU.
It was because of those attacks on You that I left HU for about a year. Now I just venturing back in I hope the naysayers have gone away
These people are annoying, but one has to assume that they have hidden agendas. The only reason I can imagine why Pd patients don't want to hear how others have managed to improve their condition is because they have been told that I don't know what I am talking about, and those people don't want them to stop taking medication. You can imagine how much money some people can lose, if we don't need to take Pd medication anymore? Horrors!
its like the analogy of a bucket of crabs: once one tries to climb out, the others grab him and pull it back in. Keep on spreading the positive message.
I just came across your posts for the first time and while some of your advice is good (and some is bad,) the premise that your formula reversed your PD and will do the same for others is false, raises false expectations, and is, therefore, reprehensible.
In one of your post you said you don’t charge people for helping them (big of you,) but the purpose of your posts is to sell your book, i.e., to charge people for helping them.
His writings have many contradictions.
nwpf.org/stay-informed/blog...
Book Review by the Northwest Parkinson’s Foundation: Reverse Parkinson's Disease, by John Pepper. Monday June 20, 2016
Part of the review;
" ... One of the most puzzling features of the book is that at the same time that Pepper wants us to believe that he is far better off after twenty years with Parkinson’s than he was at the start, he also wants us to believe that he still has the symptoms. Indeed, he lists no fewer than thirty-five symptoms of Parkinson’s that he still has: “1. Bad muscle co-ordination. 2. Constipation. 3. Choking and swallowing problems. 4. Rigidity . . . . 34. Confusion with which is the right and left side. 35. My calves become flexed when sitting” (pp. 101–02). That list of symptoms does not sound like the list one would have associated with a man who claims that his methods reduce or reverse the disease.
Halfway through his book Pepper drops a little bombshell: that he may not have had Parkinson’s at all. He reports that he went to a new neurologist, one who had never seen him before. After examining him the neurologist said to him, “You exhibit no symptoms of Pd, and it is quite obvious that you never had it in the first place. You had what is known as Parkinsonism, which could have been caused by medication or by another chemical source, possibly crop spraying chemicals” (p. 103). Pepper rejects that diagnosis: “he never asked me what my existing symptoms were, or what I had had in the past” (p. 103). Pepper even hints that the neurologist in question had self-serving reasons for not wanting investigate the possibility that anyone could reverse the progression of Parkinson’s: “The only conclusion I can come to, is that I present a threat to the medical profession. If all his Pd patients got to a stage, where they no longer need medication, nor need a neurologist any more, then I can understand his fears” (p. 104). Serious charges, those.
In the end, Pepper backs off: “On reflection, I realize that it does not really matter whether I do or don’t have Pd. It is purely academic” (p. 111). But to those who might consider taking his advice about avoiding levodopa and taking an MAO-B inhibitor, it is not purely academic. It might be life or death.
We come away from Reverse Parkinson’s Disease admiring its author’s spirit and determination, but unconvinced that his experience is fully relevant to ours. If he never had Parkinson’s to begin with, there was nothing to reverse. Until we know for sure, it is best to take this Pepper with a grain of salt."
My take away; If it sounds too good to be true, it's not true. Don't believe wild clams. Don't believe anyone trying to sell you something. Health care professionals are not all conspiring with each other to sell you drugs. Do your own research. Monitor all the PD forums.
Some drugs, therapies, compounds, enzymes, and supplements work in varying degrees for some people and not others. "Spontaneous remission" may work in one out of tens of thousands (show me hard data, not anecdotes.) See if you can relax your way out of leukemia, or for that matter, PD. It's more false hope.
I do a lot of research. Meaning therapies will emerge in the next few years. Keep up the hope, but not in this stuff.
Having read the review above, which is just that, someone's opinion. It picks and chooses parts of the book and leaves out important information leading up to those parts chosen. So most of the criticism as taken out of context. I cannot spend days and days trying to please people who don't like what I write, they are entitled to their opinions.
There are now hundreds of people I know who have gained a great deal of benefit out of following my example. They are the proof of the pudding, not those who have not tried it. I have found that around one third of the people I talk to actually start doing the walking and start getting better. The rest carry on as they are.
Pepper says, " ... I present a threat to the medical profession." Give me a break. Get over yourself.
If I don't present any threat to the medical profession then why do neurologists, without ever having examined me, tell their patients, "John Pepper does not have Pd and they must not listen to what he says?" Does that sound professional to you?
As you know, big pharma makes billions and billions a year and like all huge industries, they take steps to protect their market share, but those steps are such things as patent infringement lawsuits, spending tens and hundreds of millions buying makers of generics, etc. Look at the math. If we counted all the people exposed to your message, it would not equal the (drug) buying power of that prescribed by a single doctor and the market share controlled by 100 doctors is like a fly on the ass of an elephant. If every person who monitors this forum stopped taking PD meds, the drug companies would never know it.
Agreed!
My final point.
Disagreements, evenly strongly held conflicting beliefs are good for everyone. When Pepper says, "These people are annoying, but one has to assume that they have hidden agendas. The only reason I can imagine why Pd patients don't want to hear how others have managed to improve their condition is because they have been told that I don't know what I am talking about, and those people don't want them to stop taking medication. You can imagine how much money some people can lose, if we don't need to take Pd medication anymore? Horrors!" he is not dealing in substance, but impugning the motives of those who disagree/call him out.
I'm not a doctor or a pharmacist or a health care professional or have any financial interest in -- anything, so what's my motive for taking him to task?
Bottom line; if you follow bad advice, any bad advice, for example, by foregoing some PD meds and supplements and instead put your eggs in the fast walking or spontaneous remission basket for three years and your symptoms have not greatly improved or reversed, you endured a lower quality of life that whole time and perhaps wasted three years.
It is irrefutable that most people who take PD meds are better off 5 years later than if they took no meds.
Answer me this. If you're doing everything Pepper says, eating right, exercising, de-stressing, etc. and your symptoms continue to worsen, which they will, why not add a little L-Dopa from a drug or, for example, Mucuna Pruriens?
I have not said that fast walking works for everybody! I have not told patients to immediately stop taking Pd medication, but as their condition improves, due to the fast walking, they should be able to slowly reduce their Pd medication.
As no Pd medication does ANYTHING to stop or slow down the progression of Pd, then what is the sense in taking it if you are able to reverse the progression of the symptoms by doing fast walking? If the medication is temporarily relieving one or two of your symptoms, while you do the fast walking, all well and good, but remember, Pd medication has side effects, Exercise doesn't.
I agree with and practice almost everything you say. I was diagnosed 6 years ago, exercise a lot and have taken no PD meds, altho I'm about to start. So, to be clear, the reason you draw criticism is not the substance of your advice, it's because you use thee word "reverse" and by so doing, create false hope/expectations.
Thanks for making this clear to me. I use the word reverse because it is the only word that accurately describes what has happened and is continuing to happen to me. Reverse is a DIRECTION! It is not a conclusion.
While I continue the walking my symptoms remain at a low level. They never disappear! When I stop the walking my symptoms change direction and they start to get worse.
What other word would you use to describe this?
I don't want to argue with you, for the sake of arguing. Let me just say that your statement about being "irrefutable" is not correct.
One man, many years ago, in the first support group I joined asked me what medication I was taking. I told him and he then asked "How much I paid for it". I told him and he said "They are ripping you off". I agreed with him but said what choice do I have? He said that he did not take any medication at all. He lived, without any side effects for the next 15 or more years, much longer than all those other members lasted,other than myself. So, it is not proof that what you said is irrefutable it is just another example of how different people do things differently!
You're right. I should not have used the word irrefutable. Qualified professionals refute the premise that most people are better off taking L-Dopa meds. Individual stories and anecdotes don't.
The bes way to deal with clever people who find ways of overcoming problems is to IGNORE THEM! In that way, nobody will believe them.
In your bio John you write " ; In 1994 I was prescribed a monotherapy of an MAO-b inhibitor, which stops the natural breakdown of dopamine, in the brain, which gives us the use of a greater amount of our own dopamine; I did not take any levodopa medication " . Will your fast-walking approach work even without the MAO-b inhibitor? In other words no meds just walking? I do not have a cooperative neurologist. He has me on Siminet 4x a day now-I would like to get off that and be exercise only...need your help!
I took Pd medication for ten years, and did fast walking for the last 8 of those 10 years. I cannot say from experience that I would have done so well without the MAOb inhibitors. In the first two years, while I was going to the gym for 90 minutes a day, and taking levodopa medication my symptoms continued to get worse.
If you are not on levodopa meds and you want to do the fast walking, there is nothing to lose. But if you continue to go downhill I would seriously consider the MAOb inhibitor!
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