"What is science? Learn from science that you must doubt of the experts ... Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts. Every generation that discovers something from its experience must pass it on, but it must do so in a delicate balance between respect and disrespect...".
Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize in Physics 1965
"A mistake does not become the truth just because everyone believes in it. Nor can a truth become an error when no one adheres to it".
Mohandas Ghandi
"...we must not overestimate Science and scientific methods when dealing with human problems; and we must not assume that the experts are the only ones who have the right to express themselves in matters affecting the organisation of society"
Albert Einstein
If many scientific dogmas have fallen in the last decades, why not all others? Why not all the others? One after the other, as in a fascinating domino effect... The last decades have seen the fall of "scientific dogmas" (a real paradox when Science is change, doubt, revision and debate)... why not all the others? The mechanisms that were created to ensure rigour have straitjacketed Parkinson's research. And the undue influence of commercial interests?
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parkinsonshereandnow
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1. Reviewing everything? New questions and answers.
"What we believe determines what we see of reality.
Jean-Martin Charcot, pioneer of Neurology.
Everything. We must review absolutely everything. And thoroughly.
27 years ago I entered the Parkinsonian labyrinth when my father was diagnosed with Parkinson's....
Since then, little has changed in the quality of life of millions of sufferers once the first years of certain tranquillity have passed... That is what I see every day in a forum of more than 3,500 sufferers and their families from all over the world, especially from Latin America.
If many dogmas have fallen in the last decades, why not all the others?
When adult neurogenesis was impossible.
We believed that the adult brain could not create new neurons (neurogenesis). Ramón y Cajal said so in 1928 but left the door open to the future. And came along in 1998, seventy years later, and showed us that new neurons were indeed born until the last day of life. Later, we learned that in several brain regions and more than 1400 a day. Enough to reconfigure the whole web of brain connections, the amazing "architecture" of the brain.
Epigenetics frees us from fear of genes.
We thought genes had the last word, but a world-class scientist like Tim Spector of King's College London, an expert in genetics and twins, warned us that they were wrong. Many sufferers have felt intense worry and fear for their children and grandchildren. Until numerous researchers showed us that what we think, what we feel, what we eat, what we move, determines whether those genes are turned on or silenced. In 2019 Schaffner and colleagues told us that vitamin B12 is able to regulate the main gene for familial Parkinson's: LRRK2. And it may not be the last one linked to nutrients: vitamin D acts on more than 2000 genes known so far; magnesium is so important in gene regulation that Piovesan speaks of a "magnesome"; etc.
"The future is not in the genes. We got it wrong". This headline that appeared in the press in 2013 was the words of Tim Spector, professor of epidemiological genetics, director of the British twin registry and researcher at King's College London. One of the world's leading experts on twins. "When I started my work 20 years ago, everyone said that environment was more important," explains Spector. "About ten years ago, everyone started saying that genes were much more important. Now that opinion is changing again, people are starting to realise that genes are important for some things, and they are very useful for researching disease, but they are not useful as predictors. The genomics revolution has been very useful, it has given us a lot of tools for scientific research, but there has been too much hype about its usefulness in predicting our future, which cannot be done. The rest is yet to come.
Melatonin, much more than a sleeping pill.
Decades ago the pineal gland was something esoteric, strange, a bridge to the metaphysical, the "third eye". But of no biological value whatsoever. Then we learned that it produced the melatonin that regulated the sleep cycle and helped alleviate the "jet lag" of transatlantic air travel. It has now been discovered that it is the conductor of the orchestra or one of them. And that not only is there pineal melatonin, but that it is produced throughout the body to protect it from oxidation, regulates the glutathione system and a thousand other things. As Pierpaoli, Reiter, Acuña... have been teaching us since the 1980s.Reiter tells us in his books that all attempts to alter it a little in order to patent it have failed. They were ineffective and added unbearable adverse effects. A clear lesson for the arrogance and greed of some.
The indispensable cholesterol.
We believed for half a century that cholesterol was the enemy. Dr. Ancel Keys published inaccurate, they say manipulated, studies and almost the entire scientific community accepted it for 50 years. Thousands of studies were published corroborating those errors and in the most prestigious journals in the world. All smoke and mirrors. Already McCully, Svaffson and others questioned it in the 80s and 90s of the 20th century. And they received ostracism and numerous attacks in response. But in 2010 Tharog and in 2017 the gigantic PURE study, made public at the European Congress of Cardiological Societies, found no scientific evidence that fats (including cholesterol) increase cardiovascular risk. On the contrary, depriving the brain and heart of the necessary amount of fat increases the diseases that affect them. Cholesterol is neuroprotective (Huang 2011, 2019) and cholesterol-lowering drugs claim to be cardioprotective and neuroprotective even though they reduce coenzyme Q10 significantly (leading to myopathies and other disorders). This is not the place to reflect such a debate. It will be up to the authors of these studies to justify them to history. But something does not add up. The PURE (Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology) study followed 135,335 people aged 35-70 for 7.4 years, in 18 countries on five continents, from 628 urban and rural locations, with people of low, middle and high income. Dehghan (2017). Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from 5 continents: The PURE study. The Lancet. You have to read the final part published in the prestigious scientific journal "The Lancet":
"...total fat and individual fat types were associated with lower total mortality. Total fat and fat types were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease mortality, while saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke. Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in the light of these results".
Something is not working in all this.
It's not working. There is something wrong. At first, like in the Matrix movie, it was an intuition, a splinter stuck in the mind. Now, as the years have gone by, it has become clearer and clearer. And we have already found the explanation in scientific studies and books. We have been waiting for more than 50 years for something better than levodopa with carbidopa or benserazide. And it is not coming. What has happened in the last 200 years of modern Parkinson's history? Indeed, what has happened in the last 50 years, since the introduction of levodopa (1970) and carbidopa or benserazide (1975)? Never have so many means been used in the fight against diseases like Parkinson's itself, or Alzheimer's, cancer, AIDS or diabetes. And never have official statistics reflected such an increase in cases and deaths worldwide. Some authors speak of "epidemics" and "pandemics", even though they are not infectious diseases.
"A good question contains the seed of the answer".
Gustav Meyrink
The aim of this third chapter is to show that we should not give up before fighting this battle in which the prize is to regain our lives and avoid a long and painful journey through hell. We should not take for granted the negative things that demotivated us, which until recently were like scientific "dogmas". Even today, most studies still include in their first paragraphs the consideration of levodopa as the most successful and best treatment available. This is true to a large extent, but it also has an inaccurate side.
1) Just dopamine deficiency - why does dopamine start to be lacking?
For a long time, most sufferers and their families have believed that Parkinson's was only a dopamine deficiency because a very large number of dopamine-producing neurons (about 70% in the "sustantia nigra pars compacta") were dying.
Deficiencies: vitamins, minerals and trace elements, enzymes...
In 1970, Dr. Cawein mentioned a vitamin supplement for Parkinsonians treated with Levodopa called Larobec, without vitamin B6 (letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine). In 1971 Karobath showed some very important deficiencies accompanying the dopamine deficiency. Studies by Charlton (1992, 1997) and Hinz (2011, 2016) have shown a breakthrough of all that sufferers lack (29 deficiencies in total, of which dopamine is one).
Other neurotransmitters such as GABA...
Dr. Sabatini (in 2012), a neurobiologist at Harvard, and Dr. Sulzer (in 2015), a neurobiologist at Columbia, put the emphasis on the neurotransmitter GABA as much as on dopamine. Responsible for relaxation and neuronal activity, among many other things, and perhaps oversimplifying. Tremor would be caused by a malfunction of both the dopamine and GABA systems. Sulzer has investigated how the brain (basal ganglia neurons) regulates movement in the absence of dopamine. And they would try to increase the time that levodopa can be used by delaying or preventing dyskinesias and other problems. Is Parkinson's just a lack of dopamine?
2) Only the sustantia nigra?
The lack of dopamine-producing neurons in the "sustantia nigra pars compacta" is said to be as high as 50-70 % when the first overt symptoms of the disease occur. But neuronal loss in the "locus coeruleus" is more severe, up to 83.2 % (Zarow 2003). This region is responsible for reacting to panic and stress and produces norepinephrine from scarce dopamine and with the help of scarce vitamin C (Ide 2015). Recall that vitamin C, not very abundant in today's diet, must compete with glucose to use the same transporters at the brain's protective blood-brain barrier. High sugar intake leaves the brain (its neurons and mitochondria) unprotected against oxidation in aqueous media - for fat, vitamin E -. Could it be that the excess production of noradrenaline due to chronic stress has something to do with the dopamine deficit in Parkinsonians? Noradrenaline is formed from dopamine with the help of sufficient vitamin C. In nine years of daily presence in forums and chats, I don't know a single sufferer who doesn't hold stress responsible for his Parkinson's or thinks it has contributed a lot to it.
What about the second brain: is the "sustantia nigra pars compacta" the key?
Everything is affected: the dopaminergic, cholinergic, GABAergic, glutamatergic, etc. systems.
The second brain (enteric nervous system) produces 95% of the body's serotonin and 50% of dopamine.
3) Is levodopa-carbidopa the best option for treating Parkinson's disease?
Since the early 1970s when levodopa became widely used as a treatment, with the addition of carbidopa and benserazide since 1975, it is. But Mucuna pruriens offers natural levodopa with more efficacy and fewer adverse effects than synthetic levodopa. There are two options, in my humble opinion:
- One, use Mucuna (with carbidopa, green tea polyphenols or the Ayurvedic plants that accompany it in the formulas most commonly used in India);
- two, using synthetic levodopa with the addition of substances found in Mucuna (Q10, NADH, ursolic acid, etc.).
In addition, numerous researchers indicate that vitamin C protects neurons from residual damage (catabolites, auto-oxidation) of levodopa-dopamine (Riederer 1989, Pardo 1993, Berg 2001...), as well as lycopene from tomatoes (Suganuma 2002) or polyphenols from green tea (Kang 2010). I do not like to see so much attention given to alpha-synuclein when many Parkinson's patients do not have these alterations (as Parkinnen, Jellinger, Espay have pointed out) and that more is not invested in spreading the critical, imperative need to reduce homocysteine (as recommended by neurologist Ahlskog in his books for decades recommending vitamins B6, B9 and B12 to his patients). Not only are there many things to review, but some "paradoxes" make us question the "Parkinson's world" itself.
Are the "wars" against tobacco and cholesterol really necessary, and what about pesticides, fluoride, dental amalgams with mercury, aluminium...?
It has been a few years since I have read in depth new studies, but I remember that research was directed towards restoring a normal intestinal flora by means of healthy fecal matter, others with probiotics, etc.It seems to me that except for the protection or restoration of the intestinal flora, treatments should be common (magnesium, B12 -Dietiker 2019-, natural antioxidants and anti-inflammatories, green tea and garlic as natural antibiotics, etc).
Bacteriologist Prof. Bernard Berthet addressed it with diet and probiotics (Association Stelior, in Geneva, Switzerland); the “second brain” studies of Dr. Michael Gershon on the “second brain” and the studies of the German pathologist Heiko Braak (2003), confirmed by the research of Francisco Pan-Montojo on the ability of the pesticide rotenone to produce Parkinson's disease by affecting the intestine and reaching the brain through the vagus nerve, seem to me to be an approach to the global problem of Parkinson's diseases, which affects many areas of the body and all or almost all neurotransmitters.
I have pending studies on the importance of gut flora in mental and neurological health (Bercik, Tillisch) and a 2014 Finnish study showing the possible direct relationship between gut flora status and some Parkinson's symptoms such as balance and mobility (Scheperjans 2014). The investigators found a 77.6% reduction in abundance of Prevotellaceae in the faeces of patients with PD compared with controls.
These investigations seem to coincide in many aspects and I find a strong interrelation between the studies of Braak, Borody, Berthet, Gershon, Scheperjans, Pan-Montojo, Tillisch and the older ones of Dr. Jean Seignalet.
Just a few thoughts on one of the exciting and urgent mysteries of Parkinson's diseases.
The transistor was invented the year before I was born. I remember jets from Selfridge Air Force Base breaking the sound barrier and rattling windows around the neighborhood. My father owned one of the first portable transistor radios. It cost $79 back in the mid 50’s: $590 in today's dollars. I remember going out at night to watch Sputnik 1. 1957 was the International Geophysical Year and Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen belts. About this time I got a Rocket Ship Crystal Radio and I used it to listen to rock ‘n roll.
JFK was in the White House, ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..’ A Popular Mechanics introduced me to digital electronics and flip-flops. Somewhere about this time I found a schematic for a calculator but the 100+ transistors, at a $1 a pop, were beyond my means.
Eighth grade and Mr. Nicolson showed me how to factor out a term and reduce a simple cubic equation to a quadratic equation, I was disappointed in Mr. Britain’s lack of knowledge of the specific heat of vaporization. Yes, I was a STEM nerd before STEM was invented
Ninth grade, we moved to Flint. It took what would be a STEM SAT exam. 3 99’s, a 97, and a 90. My verbal skills were never good, Alan Shepard and Freedom 7, John Glenn make 3 orbits of the earth, The Gemini program, and Apollo 11 and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.
The 1970 really wowed me. Intel released the 1103 1k dRam chip though I didn’t get to work on this device until about 1973/1974 while at Northern Telecom. 7400 series logic with 4 nand gates on a chip. MITS Altair 8800 computer for $395!! But I waited for the TRS-80 model III at $695 and installed a memory upgrade and dual disks and LDos and Ron Cains small-C compiler, I was in hog heaven. Big mainframes at work to play with a home computer to do whatever I wanted to do with no “Mother may I”.
1981 IBM introduced the Model 5150 Personal Computer (PC) and about this time I got touched by Unix. 43 years later I am writing this on a $300 Internet connected laptop that runs Linux in a virtual machine and updates its software and applications about every 6 weeks.
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I'm Not Letting this Stop my Curcumin Use (but I am going to re-evaluate). I use Dr's Best Meriva, which is supposed to be different.
Is the alpha-synuclein theory true? There is a bleak future of cure if it turns out to be false 
Is it necessary to take meds during the night?
Alpha Synuclein: the problem or the byproduct? If the neurons are dead then why is it possible to improve? Revival? 
Is carbidopa killing Parkinsons patients at an alarming rate?
