http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/37...-arts-medicine

Soccertese good posting !!! Always frustrated that Alex is ignored. Here`s an excerpt from my story (and Aviva`s!!) about Alex:


Alex Kerten is hard core. Musician. International martial arts expert. Anti-Parkinson’s warrior. Prophet in the desert. Just how hard core? Well, if your leg was injured and you could not walk, what would be the obvious thing to do? Have a friend break your leg so it would re-set? We are definitely talking hard core.

And humanitarian. Generous and rigorous. Mixing art and science, dance and martial arts, physical and emotional, factual and spiritual, ancient and modern, traditional and innovative. Walk into the room and he will immediately see where your body is disconnected from your mind, and he senses how your breathe. He tells you that PD is a puzzle, with many elements that vary in intensity. And he says “There are no miracles; there's hard work.”


SHALL WE DANCE?
By Aviva Lori
Translated from the Hebrew edition of Ha'aretz

The atmosphere was magical. Marilyn Monroe was fascinating: "I wanna be loved by you," she sang, and people took off their shoes, stepped onto the mattresses one after the other and were soon swaying with the music. One song followed another, bossa nova and jazz, and the dancers were told to move to the rhythm, back and forth, to move their hands and feet and relax their muscles. "Do stupid things," said the emcee, "go wild."

If not for the mattresses, you might have thought this was a course in ballroom dancing. But when the dancers left the floor for a moment to wipe away perspiration or drink some water, a metamorphosis took place: They became disabled. Their legs barely moved, their facial expressions froze, their hands - mainly their hands - trembled uncontrollably.

There is nothing like the workshop for Parkinson's patients at Alex Kerten's studio in Kibbutz Glil Yam to reveal one of the undeciphered secrets of Parkinson's disease. Muscular chaos on the one hand, and an ability to control the body on the other. Chaos and discipline that exist side by side, or in opposition, in one body, in an inexplicable physical combination. When the patients move onto the padded dance floor, the trembling stops, as with a magic wand. When they leave it, the magic disappears.

Thirty years ago, Kerten, 63, a master of martial arts and former musician, began to study the connection between breathing, heartbeat and movement, and developed a therapeutic method called Gyro-Kinetics. Over the years he has used the method mainly on people suffering from Parkinson's, a disease that is incurable, but "manageable." Between 60 and 80 Parkinson's patients, aged 57 to 68, the vast majority of them men, come to him weekly in groups for dancing and martial arts classes, and report on a physical and emotional renewal that they don't achieve by any other means.

What is a man whose expertise is music and martial arts doing treating Parkinson's patients?

"The medical establishment is naturally suspicious," says Prof. Ruth Djaldetti, a senior physician in the department of neurology at the Beilinson campus of the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, and director of the clinic for Parkinson's and movement disabilities. "These things always cost a lot of money and there's a fear that charlatans will [charge for] something unnecessary. But if it's not too expensive and it helps, I recommend it. I'm always in favor of physical activity of all kinds. Some of it also makes the patients feel good, releases endorphins. There are already new research studies that have examined the subject specifically and it turned out that among those who are active, there is motor improvement. Personally I'm very much in favor of Gyro-Kinetics. In the hospital I see patients who are helped a great deal by it."

One of the participants in Kerten's workshop is the director of a department at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem and is himself a Parkinson's patient. He identified himself only partially. "There is a lot of conservatism among doctors and quite a bit of arrogance," he says. "Today there is a dominant sect in medicine that favors anything that has been scientifically proven - all the rest is inconsequential. But what Alex is doing with dance has already appeared in the international literature and in other treatment centers in Germany and especially in the United States. The top Parkinson's specialists in Israel recommend it highly. They are aware of the fact that what creates dopamine in the most natural way is walking an hour a day or what Alex is doing."

One of the scientific studies on the subject was carried out four years ago by Kerten himself and Dr. Marietta Anca, director of the clinic for movement disabilities at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. "It was a pilot that we did with 16 patients, at different stages of the disease, over three months," says Dr. Anca. "We examined every patient before and after Gyro-Kinetics therapy twice a week for an hour and a half. We wanted to see the immediate and cumulative effect, and which parameters improved. It turned out that the therapy is very effective immediately. Parkinson's patients function on medications every few hours, the way a car operates on fuel. When the effect of the medicine ends, you have to take a pill. In the work we did there were instances when people didn't have to take a pill after the therapy."
Article continues here: http://parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com/...hapter-15.html