bluedahlia, Peg, md, Bob Dawson, thanks for all your comments, contributions, reminders, and for sharing your personal stories....

This is fascinating stuff - I'm wondering what some of those who have been so interested in cortisol before make of this material.

I think 'modern medicine' (need a better term now and don't have one) has obviously contributed hugely to our lives - yet in some ways - through many elements of diagnostics, testing/evaluation, mechanisms of treatment, socio/culturally shaped focus, etc. - it also can contribute to the engine of fear that underlies some of the reasons we become ill and remain ill.

It can be challenging to think of ways that understanding the role of cortisol can help those of us with PD significantly. With the way the medications we have function -especially the longer we take them - our minds and bodies become so accustomed to a very dosage-specific reality. No one can really understand how that feels until one has been in that reality. Yet I think it structures in part our expectations for the shape of The Cure. We think of it in almos dosage-specific terms - if we could just define that one thing that makes the cells not function properly...

I think the first step is to get people out of the jail of fear, fear of this silent, secret attacker, the one called Parkinson's Disease. I am working on this one. I was reading a lot this summer about Nelson Mandela's time spent in prison, and despite privation - hard labor, incredible isolation, threat of violent treatment, lack of proper food and clothing for so many years - somehow he was able to keep his integrity and personal center, and imagine and plan for the renaissance of his country and the integration of its peoples during that time. He kept his inner strength intact through circumstances custom-made to enhance fear and PTSD in anyone. I am thinking a lot about this these days, and how it might be applicable to our situation.