OK...i`m a twin so .....
 

I sure hope this doesn`t mess things up but I am a twin...which sort of adds a different dimension to the stressed mum in pregnancy theory.
However..and THIS may be relevant;
my mum was a worrier...a hard worker,liked things to be done to the best of her ability,managed the home and 6 children [2 sets of twins] on a shoe string,sewed well into the small hours to keep us all beautifully clothed,worked every hour God sent her,looked out for others,very little time for herself.
My father...a humble,but wise and respected man,rarely complained,satisfied with his lot,happy to sit in front of the tv after his shift in the coalmine.
Stayed calm in situations,placid and even tempered...not very adventurous or inventive [ which mum found frustrating at times] but compensated by his rock steady personality.

I`m like my mum...my twin like my father.
I have PD. She does not.
My mum was like her mum ...[who was known as The angel on earth...such was her gentle nature,but still a worrier.
Both my mum and gran had neurological illnesses..my mum PD...my gran not sure what hers was.

My mum and I went through a highly traumatic experience...leastways we both managed this event similarly...and both showed signs of PD within months of each other.She was diagnosed...and died before I was diagnosed.

My twin manages situations differently to me.
My daughter is like me in looks,and manner...also has the same interests.

I am doing my damndest to ensure she tackles life`s events different to me.

I am encouraging her to CHILL over life`s hiccups....that whatever happens...it isn`t the end of the world.

I grew up scared of making errors....LOVED...but I once on the way home from school picked an overhanging flower from someones garden,to give to my mum. I spent days worrying that I had STOLEN this one lousy flower...and was terrified to go by that house again.
And I once bought flowers to say sorry to my mum for something.She threw them in the bin.

My kids know they can make mistakes and put them right.
I`ve made sure of that.
Does this help?

Six of six so far....
 

....please add to this if you can. In particular, if you know that your mum was NOT stressed during your gestation let us know. Surely we aren't going to hit 100%. Packages aren't wrapped that neatly.

Hypothesis
 

This theory can easily be tested by forming the hypothesis: more people who are conceived and carried in war torn areas are subject to PD.Two large samples of people, one conceived and born in say Plymouth, England which was heavily bombed(39-42 )and another Devon town not bombed such as Barnstaple in North Devon could be compared (I made it two DevonTowns in an attempt to control other variables) These two samples could be compared and the hypothesis proved or disproved using the correct mathematical formula.
My husband, who has P.D, was conceived and carried in Islington,London during the war.He spent his first week of life in and out of an Anderson shelter.His mother often recounted that she came straight out of the maternity hospital and straight into a shelter with him His father was responsible for water supply and could not leave.He had to be one of the first on the site of a bombing.A stressful situation for all

I am 39 and was diagnosed with pd in April 2003, but had symptoms for about 2 yrs prior to that. Mom was 28 when she had me, living in Faifax, VA; she already had my older brother and sister, my dad was working. I do know that while things were relatively comfortable, my mom smoked (as she did with all 5 births-she stopped at the age of 56 after her first cancer surgery) and we moved a lot, before and after my birth. My mom STILL worries about how the physical moves affected me, but maybe the stress of the moves affected her even more. She was raised in the D.C. area and her family was pretty poor; she shouldered a lot of responsibility, being the eldest in her family, and helped nurse both her father in law and her own mother until they passed away, then helped care for her aging father...all shortly before my birth. So I'd say she had a considerable amount of stress. She still does.
The funny thing is, my paternal grandmother is the one who had Parkinson's disease. She died from an intestinal blockage at the age of 75, and had been dealing with PD for about 15 yrs by that time.

My mother,
 

was already showing PD symptoms at age 37 when I was concieved in 1937. She passed in 1972 at age 72 of PD complications. She lived with the disease for 35 years, longer than anyone else that I am aware of.

A brother 12 years older than I was diagnosed at age 63, as I was. When he passed in 2003 at age 77 of PD complications, his autopsy showed extensive Lewy body disease. In 2002, following my Dx, we entered PROGENI, a research study on PD families at Indiana University.

A sister 10 years older than I did not exhibit overt PD symptoms, but began having dementia with hallucinations 5 years or so before she passed at 72 from pneumonia and kidney failure. No autopsy was performed as she was not in the PD sibling study. Hindsight tells me that she probably had Lewy Body dementia. Before my dx in 2002, we assumed that mom and my older brother had typical sporadic PD. There was no known PD in Mom's family background, although there could have been "shaking palsy" before Parkinson's was recognized as a specific entity.

A sister 18 months older than I is apparently unaffected at age 70. She and my older brother's two unaffected daughters (late 40s, early 50s) are also participants in the PROGENI project.

All of my siblings and I were concieved between 1925 and 1937 at the time of the Depression. My mother was a hard-working stay at home mom and my father was a public secondary school teacher and administrator. They apparently had a model marriage except for the last 15-18 years of my mom's life when she developed psychosis and dementia. We were poor, but never seriously deprived.

The family lived in central Texas during an extensive oil boom in the period of our nativity. I have wondered about possible exposure to petroleum-based neurotoxins that might have contributed to a pre-existing genetic propensity in the affected siblings in my family. My mom fell ill with encephalitis ("sleeping sickness") at age 18, but apparently fully recovered, so her PD may have been associated with that illness, accompanied by a genetic predisposition.

In my opinion, stress was not a major contributor to our disease.

Robert

Eight of eight...
 

...and Robert's familial cluster which presumably gets a class of its own. This is getting interesting. Wouldn't it be something if a thousand Parkies could sit at their keyboards and compare notes? Wonder what we could learn?

But for now, I'd be tickled with twenty replies. Anyone else?

reverett

add my dad to your yes tally. the high list

my grandmother have severe depression and other mental health issues. from her late 20's until she passed away in her 70's she lived in first mental institutions and then a nursing home.

Steffi
 

This is very interesting.........are you an identical twin or are you fraternal ???
I am very anxious to know this.

Caya

reverett,
Put me down on the non stressed list. Seeing as how my mother passed six years after I was born due to an auto accident, and my dad is now gone, I had to go ask other relatives. As far as they can remember my mom was pretty much stress free (or at least as stress free as a pregnant woman can be).

In some of the replies to this question I find some other interesting questions. Steffi, does your twin have PD also? If not, why not? If enviromental toxins and food additives are to blame. why aren't the other family members affected? They were exposed at the same amount you were. On the question of stress, why did I get PD and my brother who was under a lot more stress didn't? Also, going as far back as I can in my family. No one remembers anyone having Parkinson's or shaking palsy. What could I have been exposed to that would cause PD that they weren't and when?

I'm full of questions but after 200+ years no one can answer them.

GregD

Looking back in history, I think there would be a lot more cases of PD if maternal stress were a large factor. The stresses were always there, and still are in countries where starvation and just survival are a way of life. But the toxins were not always there. I think we have brain damage because of what goes into our bodies. Are your teflon pans scratched but you still use them?

To my knowledge my mother was not stressed during her pregnancy with me. I was the first child, and my parents were anticipating it. But I completely agree with the theory that my mother could have injested something toxic that caused my PD. Looking down on the earth from afar, like some big spiritual alien, we look like the malformed animals of the earth suffering from environmental toxins and changes. We have been struck down by something toxic, which could have started with our ancestors and been genetically passed down.

We are doing it to ourselves, and are pretty helpless to stop it. We don't stop using a toxin until it's too late. Although I am not completely trying to blow your theory, and large amounts of stress do cause chemical changes, I have to think that there is a protective buffer from all but extreme cases of stress, which may be all that you are asking.

I understand that you are talking about a small window. But in the scheme of things, I have to think that nature is stronger than that and that it takes a poison to do the damage that we suffer from in increasing numbers.

Cut off the oxygen supply and you suffer brain damage. Drink alcohol at a certain stage of the pregnancy or do drugs and you can have a fetal alcohol syndrome baby, or cocaine babies, which in the older days was probably the child that 'flunked' grades in school. What a miracle that more of us were not fetal alcohol syndrome babies.

I'm squarely in the toxin believing corner. There is a logical order to things, and we do not follow the instructions we are given.

Boy I am in a mood this morning. Must have been the doughnuts.

:D Paula