April is Parkinson's Awareness Month

[laglag]

April 11th is the official day but April i the official month. Inform others about PD and how they can contribute to research and such...

[JohnPepper]

I am so negative about Pd awareness, because it all appears to be MEDICATION DRIVEN. I can understand the drug companies wanting us to take as much medication as possible but because medication does nothing to slow down the progression of our Pd, we should be concentrating on the treatment that has been shown to reverse some of the symptoms. The non-pharmaceutical approach is not going to get support from the Drug Industry so we should be putting our money into research on the best exercise for Pd patients.

I know of not one single Pd patient who has got better taking medication. I know of many who have done so in a non-medication way. I am used to all the attempts in the past to make others believe that I do not have Pd, and that I am only interested in selling my book. I have given away a large number of books to patients who cannot afford the $20 dollars it costs for the book and delivery. Knowledge is the biggest help we are likely to get in our search for solutions to our problem.

May I suggest that we have a drive to raise money to establish which form of exercise does the most for Pd patients. Is it Dancing, Boxing, Ping Pong, Cross-Training or Fast Walking?

For a fraction of what has been wasted on drug research we could all be benefiting from the results of an Exercise Study.

[laglag in reply to JohnPepper]

That would be a great idea!

[JohnPepper in reply to laglag]

Hi Laglag. If I knew your name and could speak to you by email then perhaps we could get this off the ground. If you go to my website - reverseparkinsons.net you can get hold of me.

Please encourage as many people as you can to get this off the ground. I am getting on for 84 and don't have too many years ahead of me to carry this though on my own.

[Hikoi]

Laglag some recent research

linksmedicus.com/news/resea...

Possible reason why exercise is helpful, not GDNF.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2...

pdcenter.neurology.ucsf.edu...

[laglag in reply to Hikoi]

Hikoi, thanks so much for sending these articles. I especially liked the last one. It doesn't mention boxing specifically, but it talks about many of the activities we do at Rock Steady that some may not realize we do. The boxing part is the forced exercise, they encourage us to pound the bags as hard as we can, we also ride exercise bikes, rowing machines, we work on our voice by yelling certain things, which also uses are brain, i.e. when we're in certain groups, we yell out certain States, flowers, animals, if repeat one of these that someone else jas said, then we have to do 3 or 4 push up or jumping jacks (they modify these things if you're not able to do a full push up). We also do walking & are required to swing our arms in a big way. We do fine motor skills in different ways, i.e. put washers on screws, buttoning buttons, etc, etc.

Thanks again for sending this. It will be good info for me to come up with how different types of exercise help PD and why, which will be a good Parkinson's Awareness item.