thank you, as always

Do you not think inflammation may play a role? What about an ever-leaky BBB as we age? I don't think those things are irrelevant, do you?

As you know, I think inflammation to be one of the main drives behind PD. More specifically, I think it is a hypervigilant response that just won't shut down properly.

Carvey at Rush and Bin Liu at NIH have shown that fetal exposure to maternal bacterial toxins (LPS) alters the child's immune system such that that occurs. Specific details are determined by what point in development the exposure occurs and the reaction exists as a potential until a "trigger" is encountered. This trigger can be anything from the rigors of puberty to pregnancy to a bacterium at age 25 to influenza at 35 to natural manifestation at middle age. With so many triggers around it is no wonder that it baffles researchers.

Once triggered, however, the process becomes more clear, although it still varies with environment and endocrine response (i.e. stress). If one looks closely one can almost always find a link between any of the sensible proposed causes of PD and some variation of this inflammatory response. Mercury, aluminum, manganese, H. pylori, gluten, serum ammonia, stress, on and on. Like celiacs, we have a Great Imitator on our hands. And don't forget that inflammation opens the BBB as well as the barrier in the gut. Add in constipation and cook in your own soup. Throw in a little oxidation and mitochondrial dysfunction and you've really got something there.

Despite the official dogma, I am convinced that PD is a product of the Industrial Revolution and not some scourge noted in ancient texts. A description of a man with terrible tremors is NOT what would have been observed in the pre-Ldopa days. It would have been a man turned to stone. All the ingredients were there in London circa 1750 - 1800. The coal dust deep in the lungs would have been a great trigger and the social disintergration made a stressful nightmare of it. I feel certain that the public health provided a steady supply of fetal beginning points.

So, we must chase symptom relief, I suppose.

lurking,
i'm really not knowledgeable enough to comment on complex cell processes such as inflammation or bbb permeability. remember the drug addicts who took a synthetic heroin or something like that and quickly developed pd? and of course the influenza pandemic caused a lot of pd. my point is there appears to be many causes, some acute and other chronic. so if rick is saying pd is a result of modern society, not much one can do to completely escape the causes but hopefully biomarkers will be found to identify early pd so neuroprotective treatments can be tested at a much earlier stage. won't help us directly but hopefully the research will result in early pd being inexpensively treatable and there will be more money to find a cure for us old fogies or at least provide some long term care

just my 2 cents on mercury, dentists who were exposed to a lot of mercury in amalgams as far as i know don't have a higher incidence of pd. not saying it isn't neurotoxic but you'd think with all the amalgam put into people's mouths there would be a lot more pd if mercury was responsible for a sig. amount of pd.

It is not so much that I think it originated in the 1700s as that it became much more obvious. Consider some of the changes - 1) Family support dissolved as people left the village for the city; 2)The peace of the plow was traded for the stress of the factory; 3) Clean air was traded for smoke; 4) Artificial lighting destroyed circadian cycles; 5) A major shift in wheat types took place as the old varieties were standardized to accomodate mechanical harvesting; 6) The slave worked plantations of the New World knocked the bottom out of the price of white sugar which everyone could now afford; 7) Tea, as well, suddenly became common; 8) The chemistry industry appeared as coal tar and such began to yield their secrets; and more. And each and every one of those contributes to inflammation.


1. Rev Environ Health. 2006 Apr-Jun;21(2):105-17.

Involvement of environmental mercury and lead in the etiology of
neurodegenerative diseases.

Monnet-Tschudi F, Zurich MG, Boschat C, Corbaz A, Honegger P.

Department of Physiology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Florianne.Tschudi-Monnet@unil.ch

The incidence of neurodegenerative disease like Parkinson's disease and
Alzheimer's disease (AD) increases dramatically with age; only a small percentage
is directly related to familial forms. The etiology of the most abundant,
sporadic forms is complex and multifactorial, involving both genetic and
environmental factors. Several environmental pollutants have been associated with
neurodegenerative disorders. The present article focuses on results obtained in
experimental neurotoxicology studies that indicate a potential pathogenic role of
lead and mercury in the development of neurodegenerative diseases. Both heavy
metals have been shown to interfere with a multitude of intracellular targets,
thereby contributing to several pathogenic processes typical of neurodegenerative
disorders, including mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, deregulation of
protein turnover, and brain inflammation. Exposure to heavy metals early in
development can precondition the brain for developing a neurodegenerative disease
later in life. Alternatively, heavy metals can exert their adverse effects
through acute neurotoxicity or through slow accumulation during prolonged periods
of life. The pro-oxidant effects of heavy metals can exacerbate the age-related
increase in oxidative stress that is related to the decline of the antioxidant
defense systems. Brain inflammatory reactions also generate oxidative stress.
Chronic inflammation can contribute to the formation of the senile plaques that
are typical for AD. In accord with this view, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs and antioxidants suppress early pathogenic processes leading to Alzheimer's
disease, thus decreasing the risk of developing the disease. The effects of lead
and mercury were also tested in aggregating brain-cell cultures of fetal rat
telencephalon, a three-dimensional brain-cell culture system. The continuous
application for 10 to 50 days of non-cytotoxic concentrations of heavy metals
resulted in their accumulation in brain cells and the occurrence of delayed toxic
effects. When applied at non-toxic concentrations, methylmercury, the most common
environmental form of mercury, becomes neurotoxic under pro-oxidant conditions.
Furthermore, lead and mercury induce glial cell reactivity, a hallmark of brain
inflammation. Both mercury and lead increase the expression of the amyloid
precursor protein; mercury also stimulates the formation of insoluble
beta-amyloid, which plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of AD and causes
oxidative stress and neurotoxicity in vitro. Taken together, a considerable body
of evidence suggests that the heavy metals lead and mercury contribute to the
etiology of neurodegenerative diseases and emphasizes the importance of taking
preventive measures in this regard.

PMID: 16898674 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]



[QUOTE=soccertese;911403]lurking,
i'm really not knowledgeable enough to comment on complex cell processes such as inflammation or bbb permeability. remember the drug addicts who took a synthetic heroin or something like that and quickly developed pd? and of course the influenza pandemic caused a lot of pd. my point is there appears to be many causes, some acute and other chronic. so if rick is saying pd is a result of modern society, not much one can do to completely escape the causes but hopefully biomarkers will be f

rick,
1. i think sugar was still a luxury in colonial times, don't you watch antiques road show where they put a price on boxes where sugar was kept under lock and key?
2. i'm an agronomist and i think the improvement of wheat varieties actually lowered the gluten content.. ,pre-industrial rev,. breads were like rye, very heavy due to gluten, modern agriculture has increased yields in wheat - plumper kernals, shorter stocks, not so much greater protein percentage. as i've said before, farmers grow soft white, hard red and durum wheat and actually get penalized if the protein content is too high, bakers and pasta makers want consistent protein/gluten content so they can make a consistant product.

2. i thought they were mining/smelting copper, tin for thousands of years, and using pewter utensils, i imagine there was a lot of toxic metals floating around in the air and in food plus i think a lot of wood smoke was inhaled over the years. i don't think ancient roman, greek, and medieval european cities were all that clean - open sewers, trash, plague, etc.
3. few people lived to 50?
4. not so sure if farm life was so idyllic, manor/serf, very few people owned farms, indebted servitude, royalty.

AR is my favorite and is the only reason a television is allowed in my home.
1- (Wikipedia )
"During the 18th century, sugar became enormously popular. Britain, for example, consumed five times as much sugar in 1770 as in 1710.[20] By 1750 sugar surpassed grain as "the most valuable commodity in European trade — it made up a fifth of all European imports and in the last decades of the century four-fifths of the sugar came from the British and French colonies in the West Indies."[20] The sugar market went through a series of booms. The heightened demand and production of sugar came about to a large extent due to a great change in the eating habits of many Europeans. For example, they began consuming jams, candy, tea, coffee, cocoa, processed foods, and other sweet victuals in much greater numbers."

2- (The Economist")
"In 1701 AD the Berkshire farmer Jethro Tull devised a simple seed drill based on organ pipes, which resulted in eight times as many grains harvested for every grain sown. Like most agricultural innovators since, he was vilified. A century later the threshing machine was greeted by riots."
So they were eating more of it?

An interesting point is that while most of the ancient tomes could be describing many things, the two best are from the Vedas of the Indus Valley who mastered copper tech around 4000 BC and China of 500 BC who perfected bronze casting.

to split hairs, the references you site on sugar just mention increases in consumption and $ value, not absolute amounts and whether all classes could afford much sugar.
as far as wheat, production greatly increased BUT I ASSUME THAT SUPPORTED A POPULATION INCREASE, NOT a lot MORE CONSUMPTION/PERSON, wheat has been around since beforeMOSES - the jews fleeing egypt had to eat unleavened bread. after the industrial revolution increased harvest yields the avg citizen may have eaten more wheat but that likely supplanted rye which has much more gluten. so my contention is that lbs/person likely didn't go up a lot, just that population increased as a result of more food production.
but you can easily identify areas of the world where wheat is the main staple - egypt for example or parts of china, russia, india, pakistan and see if there is a higher incidence of pd. and can compare to rice eating areas in s.e. asia/indonesia - wheat doesn't do well in hot/humid climates, too much disease.