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Originally Posted by JoeM
I don't think you can conclude a relationship between PD and schizophrenia from that article. What we have is a set of substances (neurotrasmitters, factors, proteins, etc) which interact with brain cells and, depending on your particular genetic mutation, some specific group of brain cells is extremely sensitive to any unbalance in the quantity of one or more of those substances in your brain. That unbalance can also be triggered by an external environmental agent. Depending on what part of your brain is more affected you have one disease or another. But maybe something's escaping to my understanding and you are right.
With regard to stress, my personal experience makes me believe that there's a relationship between PD and stress. Don't know if it's a cause or an effect.
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I agree, Joe. Schizophrenia, like many other psychotic conditions is caused by an imbalance in the neurotransmitters. Now that clinical psychologists know this, they can control the symptoms using medications that help reset the balance to the proper levels. Hehe... I learned something from my Psychology class.
When I was working full-time at a company that was diving deeper than the hole in the North Atlantic Rift, I was off most of the time. I had cognitive function problems, fatigued beyond anything I can explain, and I was ill most of the time. There were also those totally bizarre dreams, and many other things happened. Then I lost my job. After the intial panic, I calmed down, and have gone back to school. Well guess what? Many of the symptoms went away. I'm actually sleeping nearly through the night, and I'm even able to memorize music, which was out of the question before for so many years. I do still have gait problems and freeze when going from grass to pavement, and when panically running up stairs. I realize this now, and avoid being in a rush. There's no reason to kill myself, or worse make a fool of myself in public, so if I'm late I arrive late. There's nothing anyone can do about it.
The jist of it is, stress can wreak havoc on the body, mind, and immune system. PD I think is another one of those syndromes or diseases that is exacterbated by stress, and the more we can do to avoid it the better we will be.
John