Dr. Laurie Mischley slides (from her retr... - Cure Parkinson's
Dr. Laurie Mischley slides (from her retreat 2 years ago) take a look at the chart on page 12.
I ❤️ Dr Mischley. She’s one of the best integrative researchers around.
Exactly! The hard truth is that conventional neurologists can do very little with PD except disguise the progression by prescribing (time limited) L-Dopa or equivalent and that without integrative medicine we are left to make sense for ourselves of the confusing data on nutrition and exercise. Get it right and you do get results as the Brederson slide shows (for Alzheimers).
I understand your reluctance to accept the fact that Parkinson’s is a progressive disease and to want to respond by aggressively chasing after any or all measures which are touted to help. However disparaging neurologists who are realistic is not helpful.
I respect my neurologist. But there is no escaping how little they can do. I wish they could do more. But what is more of a concern is that there are clearly gains to be had from promoting good health for what is a chronic degenerative condition and that needs much more research and guidance. But it cannot be prescribed!
I sort of agree. However, my 2 French neurologists, and the one senior UK neurologist I spoke to all emphasised non-pharmaceutical therapies first. All told me exercise was the best therapy, and 2 of the 3 suggested Tai Chi. Stress management, healthy diet, and intermittent fasting were all recommended by Dr Khan. My French neurologist concurred there were only symptomatic remedies in his current locker and helped me find the Spark trial.
Dr Mischley's report is interesting, but 12 individuals, no placebo control, and all magically respond to the pre-selected composite formula. She is right - that is a bit outside the comfort zone for conventional research. It is not right that conventional research EXCLUSIVELY focuses on high return patentable pharmeceutical research. In earlier posts I have linked to proper (unblinded) placebo controlled trials for exercise in PD (several others posted by iqbaliqbal). There is currently a trial into faecal transplants in progress in Belgium, and I have seen vitamin B trials.
There is a controversy in France at the moment about government plans to withdraw funding for state partial reimbursement of homeopathic remedies costs. Nobody disputes that it is scientifically proven these remedies are no better than placebo. The saving is fairly trivial at (I think) E26 million in a total drug budget of E20bn. (But it happens to be double the saving being made by very controversial cutbacks in paramedic and emergency services - who could be funded if this reimbursement ends). The 4000 licenced homeopathic therapists, and roughly 12000 conventional doctors using homeopathic remedies agree that it would probably not deter use - the remedies are not expensive and the reimbursement only 30% of cost.
The issue is the tacit endorsement state reimbursment gives for homeopathic remedies, in spite of the fact that it is universally accepted that they don't actually work. It is felt that they form an important part of a total individually tailored caring therapist delivery, which itself provides valuable benefit to an important patient group. In other words, a therapy style which involves a close focus on the individual needs of the patient, and creates a patient / therapist bond, in itself produces a therapeutic benefit. Dr Mischleys results may well be affected by that factor.
I've read most of the exercise trials and I agree they are the best evidenced. Nutrition is bedevilled by variability and the difficult of specifying diet so is a tough one. My breakfast consists of organic muesli, stewed apricots, bifidus yoghurt, brazil nuts walnuts almonds, a variety of seeds, chopped nectarine and fresh grated nutmeg. Try putting that into Dr Mischley's dietary questionnaire! (I have). But overall nutrition must affect our bodies defensive system - we just don't know precisely how. So I try to optimise diet, exercise and meds but it would be nice to have a professional advice system that did all that. I don't see our medicine system doing that any time soon. It's not in their business model.
btw how are you doing with the canicule? I am melting and its only 36C in the Cher.
Ah - I have air conditioning in my office, which normally I try to avoid using, because its so hard coming out into the heat, but this week, force majeure
And we have a pool. I am just beginning to contemplate running the reversible heat pump to cool it, which really goes against the grain. We benefit too from some air movement in the Languedoc (often in the form of flattening gales) and we are at 400m above sea level. It's still bloody hot!
Breakfast sounds healthy. We have scrambled egg on wholemeal toast as a treat once a week, and a croissant and jam with a yoghurt and honey once a week. And fresh pineapple, banana, muesli (usually Jordans crunch) homemade yoghurt and honey 5 days a week, and most days homemade kefir with a tablespoon of organic milled flaxseed. That doesn't go into her questionnaire any too easily either 
Wow, this is powerful.
1) Interview with Dale Bredesen (2015)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal (IMCJ): "Up to this point, cognitive decline, once identified, has been largely considered irreversible and unstoppable. Do you consider this the case now, and why?"
Dr Bredesen: "I do not consider this the case now. There has been tremendous progress in the last several years, and this is a very exciting time for studies of neurodegenerative illness. Although the dogma has been that there is nothing that prevents, slows, or reverses the course of cognitive decline in diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, there are clearly multiple studies now—in both anecdotal and controlled trials—that show examples in which there is indeed prevention and/or reversal of decline. We published the first paper to show that just last September with a small, anecdotal group.1 We are looking at additional people now, but we are seeing the same sort of outcome again and again."
IMCJ: "In your paper, you talked about the monotherapeutic approach. Today, what are the drawbacks of a monotherapeutic approach?"
Dr Bredesen: "As you know, in many chronic illnesses, whether you are talking about osteoporosis, oncogenesis, or atherosclerosis, or you are talking about cognitive decline due to Alzheimer’s or a pre-Alzheimer’s condition, like severe cognitive impairment or mild cognitive impairment—in all of those cases, you are really looking at physiological imbalances. In other words, these are networks of molecular pathways that are out of balance, associated with a chronic disease process.
"The idea of going after these with a single drug, although it has been successful in some cases under some circumstances, is not the optimal approach—either from the standpoint of theory or from the standpoint of practice. This is being shown more and more to be the case, whether you are talking about cardiovascular disease or you are talking about Alzheimer’s disease or cancer. The idea of a cocktail approach to cancer has actually been in place since the 1960s and is the standard approach now.
"The ideal of using triple therapy for HIV, of course, is the first approach that actually showed a real benefit and has been the standard of care since that time. I think that it is, perhaps, not surprising that we are seeing the same sort of thing with cognitive decline. I think that some of the drugs that have failed in clinical trials could actually succeed on the right foundation of additional therapeutics."
2) The article Mischley was citing:
Bredesen, Dale E. "Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program." Aging (Albany NY) 6.9 (2014): 707.
