I have a high school degree, I tend to skim over papers when I read them, and I've spent most of my life pickling my brain. So please take my theories with a pinch of salt.
My whole life, even as a child, I have thought of those drawbridge ratchets as philosophically important. There is a ratchet with teeth and a pawl with a spring that clicks into the teeth to ensure the ratchet only turns in one direction. If you can put enough force into turning the ratchet until you hear the click of the pawl, you don't have to worry about the ratchet going backwards. Move an inch... click. Move an inch... click. I have always found this comforting.
So I don't know if it is possible to stop or reverse PD with lifestyle changes and/or supplements. But here is what I think: I think PD does damage to things in our bodies. Important things. I think if we can stop the damaging, we will still have all of these damaged things in our body.
But if we CAN stop the damaging, over time we will heal to some degree. Slowly. Over much time. Now maybe with stem cell therapy a person could get a rapid improvement because you are adding functioning cells to the body, but with lifestyle changes and/or supplements I think the best you can do is stop the damaging and start the gradual slow incomplete healing.
So what is the point Bolt? Where does the ratchet and pawl figure into this?
The pawl represents the protocol you choose to stop of the damaging. If you can find the combination of things that stop the damaging, that is your pawl.
The ratchet represents the slow and gradual healing. You only heal in one direction: improvement.
I think once you have found your pawl, your protocol that you believe in, you need to stay on the straight and narrow and follow that protocol like your life depends on it. You don't have to be miserable, but much like being on a high mountain path, you really want to stay on the path.
If I break my protocol, my pawl, my ratchet will spin backwards to some degree and damaging will occur. Eventually I will get back on the path, but by then there is more damage to slowly and incompletely recover from.
In my case, what I am talking about is mostly lifestyle. I am gluten and lectin free, I don't drink, and the only meat I eat is grass fed beef. Sometimes in the past I have broken down and had a few beers or maybe a pizza, or gone to a family gathering and could not resist the chicken or potato salad. We are all used to committing some dietary sins and paying for them later, but our account is already overdrawn, we may not bounce back.
I feel the same way about dramatically changing protocols. Tweaking within the scope of the logic that defines a protocol is one thing, totally changing horses means at least one of the two protocols you were trying was the wrong one. Obviously if a person is getting worse after giving a protocol a lengthy try, or after a short try if things get worse rapidly, that makes sense. But jumping around from dissimilar to dissimilar protocol seems reckless.
Okay, that is my analogy of the ratchet and the pawl.
The most important thing to remember is A: I only have a high school degree, and B: I am not a smart man. The roads are littered with the remains of people that thought they had things figured out.
YES I am still on Coconut Oil, aka CO
I am rigidity- dominant PD ; My personal experience!
