Parkinson's disease seems to the disease that scientists are primed to make a breakthrough on soon. The side benefit is greater understanding of the brain.
My dad died earlier this year from complications due to lewy body dementia which (AFAIK) is related to Parkinson’s. It’s a truly awful way for a person to spend their last years. I get why Robin Williams took control of his end.
Seeing as there is likely a genetics component to these diseases, I’m really rooting for these scientists.
L-Dopa is used to treat Parkison's Disease and encephalitis lethargica. Cuba long time ago has developed a technique to implant nervous cells deep in the brain to fix Parkison's.
I'd be extremely skeptical too a few years ago but my personal experience of what I've learned the last few years has made me realize we're not safe from, are prone to information bubbles in the Western or "advanced/modern" world of things.
The medical industry, as well as health institutions, have their cost structures, as well as their hierarchy of competence and expertise - and likewise the networks of colleagues and information channels they listen to or are willing to listen to - that they trust via whatever path of indoctrination for that path they were likely lead to or directed to use during their education and beginning practical experience/training.
There's a clinic in the Ukraine, who started doing fetal stem cell research 30 years ago, and clinically 25 years ago started offering treatment to the public. Apparently they have great success with things like MS, Crohn's, etc. Apparently if you use fetal stem cells that are between 7-14 weeks then they're safe to inject into anyone because the cells haven't started to differentiate into a specific person yet, or at least the immune system hasn't started to develop yet, and so there apparently won't be rejection - as we all started from those beginning stem cells; and because they're not adult cells yet, these cells apparently can differentiate into any of the ~1200 different cell types that make up humans, and seem to differentiate into whatever cells needed - directed by the body's immune or repair-generation-regeneration system; we know that there's a messenger cell type called MSC (mesenchymal stem cell) that will spot and tell the body what cells it needs to heal, however those cells exponentially deteriorate/die with age and don't replenish after birth - and so injecting just MSC can initiate healing - but doesn't seem to include or allow all building blocks or instruction pieces necessary.
Once when I was traveling for a normal stem cell treatment, my own adult cells taken (from bone marrow but I have done many from adipose/fat derived stem cell treatments to heal various injuries), a conversation I had with a girl seated next to me, after my sharing my story, shared about her father who regularly traveled to Mexico for a post stroke stem cell treatment - where they'd inject stem cells into the area of the brain he had a stroke - and he continued to improve/have permanent improvement after each treatment; traveling from Canada, and so presumably not available in Canada, and unknown if available in the US. Stem cell treatments actually aren't legal in Canada yet. Even though there have been clinics in the US doing them for 20+ years now - successfully and following scientific/research protocol - the response you'll get from orthopedic surgeons in Canada (all doctors who do stem cell treatments AFAIK first did training to become orthopedic surgeons) will tell you that there isn't evidence showing that stem cell treatments work.
And so this is in part why I don't trust what any particular doctor tells you. The systems around the world are broken. And where you'd think an organization like the WHO would be attempting to organize the world's information and bring and insure integrity with things like clinical trial research, that seems to be farthest from the truth. And not only that but no government health institution seems to do an adequate job, or even at all, of keeping track of outcomes of treatments in the short or long-term - where there's barely any accountability and the industry is expected to self-monitor. Most recently I heard about "breast implant illness [BII]" that seems relatively common, but unknown how rare or common, but where women before treatment aren't even told of the possibility - and so they don't think to associate symptoms they may get months or even years later, and most often progressively worsening, to the implants; Danica Patrick very recently made a video of her years long journey of trying to problem solve health issues, and only a week or two ago having her implants removed with immediate relief of some symptoms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A7GFBXHmzM [a bit graphic, maybe don't be eating like I was when I first watched]
How many other relatively common treatments are offered where proper informed consent isn't possible, where no one is monitoring to make sure adequate information is provided in written form and/or verbally, where the risks are adequately explained and in a layperson enough way that the actual potential consequences are understood - perhaps say like multiple long-form stories of women like Danica - otherwise what frame of reference does a person who's never suffered anything severe have to pull from, e.g. how do you adequately get across the idea that "may cause up to unavoidable 10/10 pain, sometimes leading to suicide, as sometimes treatments/medications won't help alleviate the pain or mental dysfunction caused"?
The above is in part why I believe every appointment with a medical professional should have video and audio recorded for evidence - immediately stored by one or more third-parties [choice of professional, choice of patient, local copy backup, personal copy backup, etc], but also for accountability and training, to make sure through perhaps real-time or near real-time analysis - like Tesla's visual AI chips but for audio - will make sure all topics are necessarily covered or mentioned, or for cohort/group/peer analysis - what language is being used by peers in general, where are differences, etc. allowing for targeted real person review/analysis; my passion for all this is due to the health system hurting me severely multiple times.
Edit to add: I meant to share the Ukraine clinic's name: EmCell [.com]
Sorry, if I said L-dopa cures Parkinson's. Oliver Sachs wrote about L-dopa and encephalitis lethargica: initially, it awakens people frozen from lethargica--later it creates problems. So, it is not a cure, but has major 'side-effects'.
About the cuban treatment. Late Pierre-Victor Mpoyo[1] went to Cuba for this treatment. Mpoyo was a billionaire, and he had means to the best available services in the world--ranging from France, USSR, USA, etc. As the 'western' treatments didn't help him, he went to Cuba.
L-Dopa is not a treatment. It's absurd to think it is.. Just like stimulants, agonists or dopamin precursors. They are necessary palliatives except they simultaneously worsen the disease because dopamin kill humans since it oxidize.
Selegiline is one of the few dopaminergics to actually target the problem.
Never heard about the Cuba approach, I'll have to study it
This is really bad stuff, L-Dopa is absolutely not used to treat the disease.
It's the final clock of normalcy. To paraphrase an expert on the matter, when you choose to use L-Dopa, you're starting a period of a year or two of relative normalcy again before the brain uncontrollably continues its decent.
Do you use it earlier and have better good years, or later and buy just a few more before the end?
This is not a treatment. It's a mercy clause.
Also, there is no such thing as a nervous cell. There is deep brain stimulation, which overcomes some of the dopaminergic destruction of those neurons, but this does not AFAIK change the course of progression in the disease.
Please, the bar here is not high, but there's a good level for factual correctness. If there is something revolutionary, a cited source would help a lot. As someone who didn't cite this, but I think some of this is not too extraordinary knowledge. The sharing is good and appreciated at least. :)
My father was diagnosed 15 years ago and started showing signs as early as 2007. My grandfather and two of his brothers had Parkinson’s which nobody in the family talked about. I am hoping to get genetic markers tested for myself and my son — though my understanding is they are not always directly correlated.
The most surprising aspect of the disease to me has been the changes to personality and executive function. My father, a very independent, loving, and physically active individual now is unable to decide what he wants to eat every day or leave the house because of anxiety. It’s hard to watch and I hope for my family and others that soon there is a cure.
If anyone has any suggestions for how to get someone to accept their diagnosis and try various methods of treatment, I would welcome their advice.
Longecity always has stuff, lots of miss, some hits. Just was looking at the mitochondria protocols that have been refined over the past few years, pretty cool stuff, but even if that works it's only one tiny aspect of aging and degenerative diseases.
A successful fission-fusion protocol should be able to bring the mitochondria population to a point where stem cell reserves are able to split in two perfect (nearly) copies, boosting stem cell reserves counts. Then you can use C60 (buckyballs, how it triggers this I do not know) to use stem cell reserves.
There's a lot of pros, cons, finicky, armchair theorists, desperate people, really smart people, and principled experimenters all in a mix. Absolutely fascinating reading. But one onramp seems to be mitochondrial in origin, and the fission-fusion protocol... turnbuckle, I think it is? Seems to be pretty darn successful in individuals, especially older ones.
Not sure if that helps at all obviously the classic well proven methods are best if you can, but if you're wanting to know down Aubrey DeGray's aging damage/etc list, this is a good onramp to cover a few of them. Very bleeding edge, and very cool stuff! The threads can take days to read but are worth every penny-second of that time.
Oh, and there is some established stuff on Parkinson's, the destruction of dopaminergic neurons&etc, and other parts of the progression of the disease of Parkinson's out there. I'd recommend boning up on that too, if it's hereditary, it's good to know. Just get a DNA test that doesn't freaking sell your data cough cough. It's not terribly expensive for the potential upside and just worth knowing sooner rather than later whatcha got going on for that
There's also doctors that look at genetic stuff purely now, I think? Not necessarily integrative, just purely genetics stuff. I have no idea about that, maybe that's helpful a tad!
For those interested in anti-aging stuff for mitochondrial population renewal (as a setup for stem cell reserves renewal), y'all might enjoy this thread right here:
Neurodegenerative diseases are in fact quite simple to partially address.
As always oxidative stress and mitochondria bioenergetics are the critical factor in the chain leading to neural apoptosis.
Anyone can get revolutionary results with e.g Skq1 which is precisely 1000000 times more potent than NAC because it exploit the negative charge of the mitochondria to be attracted to it.
But even without taking of mitochondria targeted antioxidants there exist many potent mitoprotectors, see e.g
the pictures of saved brain volume in this generic oxys rat simulation (accelerated Aging)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221738761_Evaluatio...
As I often say, the times it takes for scientific knowledge to be used by practitioners is often infinity. In fact that is the general case. We will have to wait for more people to suffer and die because you know running clinical trials is such a 20th century thing
I've been feet in the bio space for funsies for a while, this is one of the coolest protocols I've seen yet since it's relatively cheap, easy, and actually seems to have a pretty solid impact where stuff matches what's on the tin. I think both of y'all would appreciate it and would love to hear y'all's thoughts. Currently doing this now as I have some pretty bad metabolic issues and am sensitive to fission promoting substances with similar reactions to all.
Take with a grain of salt, but remember you have to both have fusion and fission to clean up your mitochondrial pool, I think the details are in the thread. Then there's increasing counts, and demethylating the mtDNA. Not too hard if following a protocol is all you want, but this is seriously cool from a nerdy perspective. Can you imagine once yearly depot injections with slightly tweaked versions of these in 50 years for anti-aging? That would be so sick.
Lol actually I wonder wether chronic lack of affection result in specific mental disorders and deficits akd how to maximally resorb them (e.g Oxytocin?)
But that's a no for parkinson.
Usually therapy and medication can help a lot. If you're just trying to naively increase "serotonin" or "oxytocin", you may get results, but probably will be stuck for a while.
Neglect is abuse. Once again, neglect is abuse.
If you have an emotional need problem, medications can help stabilize the environment. But you have to find a way to meet your core emotional needs and heal first. And do do that, a good therapist (can take some time to find) can help with that.
Parkinson is essentially a mysterious oversensitization to dopamine autoxidation in the dopaminergics neurons mitochondria membrane.
Parkinson is therefore a solved problem.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29486701/
