Interesting thread.

As far as I understand the situation, you can't give blood in the UK if you have Parkinson's [1].

Logroscino et al. write [2]:
"Iron overload and systemic iron stores may be important in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). We therefore examined the association between blood donations, which reduce body iron stores, and risk of PD in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, a large cohort investigation of U.S. men. Our hypothesis was that blood donation reduces the risk of PD by lowering systemic iron stores. Although the number of blood donations was inversely related to the ferritin levels in a subsample of the study population, no association was found between the number of blood donations and risk of PD (P for trend = 0.6). Unexpectedly, the risk of PD was higher among men who reported recent multiple blood donations (P for trend = 0.05). The results of this study do not support the hypothesis that reduced systemic iron stores lower the risk of PD."

References
[1] BBC report 8 Oct 2010.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11465723

[2] "Blood donations, iron stores, and risk of Parkinson's disease."
Logroscino G, Chen H, Wing A, Ascherio A.
Mov Disord. 2006 Jun;21(6):835-8.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16453313

John

Such a great topic! It seems that Intermittent Hypoxia can be a benefit and Chronic Intermittent Hypoxia, a detriment...with a possible threshold from protective value to pathology.

My husband was an airline pilot for 20 years and was dx with PD a few years after he left. Your thoughts about hypoxia spiked my curiosity whether the therapeutic benefits that athletes gain from intermittent hypoxic training could apply to flight crews and high altitude. Apparently, the intermittent hypoxic training with athletes has had remarkable results of increased performance and proposed protection from diseases. There are well documented studies on pilots and hypoxia; however, I was not able to find any studies or correlations with proposed protection from diseases. In my opinion, this would make a great study!

http://jap.physiology.org/content/90/4/1593.full
Invited Review: Physiological and pathophysiological responses to intermittent hypoxia
The clinical use of intermittent hypoxic training is most recognized by Russian physicians as a therapeutic modality useful in priming the patient for the stress of a host of disease processes. The rationale is based on the cross-protective value of adaptations to one stress providing resistance to another stress (44,54, 84). Adaptation to stress results in enhanced expression of stress proteins and antioxidant systems that can then provide protection against the generalized stress of disease (53).

The next paper is one of the the most comprehensive studies of it's kind. People who live in higher altitudes such as Colorado tend to live longer and have less heart disease. These results are theorized to be the result of lower oxygen levels and synthesized vitamin D, due to increased solar radiation at higher altitudes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0325151643.htm
Living at High Altitude Reduces Risk of Dying from Heart Disease: Low Oxygen May Spur Genes to Create Blood Vessels

This last paper is a good read and states that the antioxidant uric acid can act as an Iron chealator.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221408/
The Promise of Neuroprotective Agents in Parkinson’s Disease

Uric acid (UA) is a natural antioxidant that can reduce oxidative stress by acting as a scavenger of free radicals and an iron chealator (Ames et al., 1981; Davies et al., 1986; Yu et al., 1998; Hink et al., 2002). Urate suppresses oxyradical accumulation (Yu et al., 1998), inhibits cytotoxic activity of lactoperoxidase (Everse and Coates, 2004), and protects against DA-induced apoptosis (Jones et al., 2000). UA has been found to suppress oxidative stress and prevent dopaminergic cell death in animals (Duan et al., 2002). In addition, slower rates of clinical progression were observed in untreated early stage PD patients who have higher plasma, serum, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of UA (Schwarzschild et al., 2008; Ascherio et al., 2009). In contrast, lower levels of urate were present in CSF (Tohgi et al., 1993) and post-mortem in the SNpc of patients with PD (Church and Ward, 1994). In a population-based cohort study of 4,695 participants aged 55years and older, higher serum levels of UA were associated with a significantly decreased risk of PD (de Lau et al., 2005). Urate therapy reduced the risk of PD in a dose-dependent manner (de Lau et al., 2005; Schwarzschild et al., 2008). Additionally in a prospective study of subjects with early stage PD there was a 49% reduction in the progression of the disease with high urate intake (Schwarzschild et al., 2008).

Also included in this paper: (we are thinking of either trying to participate in this trial or doing a trial run with Isradipine)

The dihydropyridine L-type calcium channel blocker Isradipine has been reported to reduce hypoxia-induced activation of Ca2+-dependent xanthine oxidases, monoamine oxidases, cytosolic phospholipase A2, and cyclo-oxygenases (COX-2) along with a decrease in free radical generation and cytochrome-crelease (Barhwal et al., 2009). Increased expression of calpain, caspase-3, (Barhwal et al., 2009), and glutamate-induced neurotoxicity (Pizzi et al., 1991) was also inhibited by Isradipine.

A possible route?

Smoking => anemic hypoxia => less iron => less PD

Checkoway et al. write [1]: "Ever having smoked cigarettes was associated with a reduced risk of PD (odds ratio (OR) = 0.5, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.4, 0.8). A stronger relation was found among current smokers (OR = 0.3, 95% CI: 0.1, 0.7) than among ex-smokers (OR = 0.6, 95% CI: 0.4, 0.9), and there was an inverse gradient with pack-years smoked (trend p < 0.001)."

Yoneda and Watanabe write [2] "Increased levels of carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) in smokers are blamed for inducing pre-hypoxic tendency classified as anemic hypoxia." They conclude "Paradoxically, smokers are slightly resistant to hypoxia with respect to emerging subjective symptoms. However, bluntness to hypoxia could postpone the detection of the possible hypoxic occurrence in pilots."

References

[1] "Parkinson's Disease Risks Associated with Cigarette Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, and Caffeine Intake"
Harvey Checkoway, Karen Powers, Terri Smith-Weller, Gary M. Franklin1, W. T. Longstreth Jr.,
Phillip D. Swanson
Am. J. Epidemiol. (2002) 155 (8): 732-738.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/155/8/732.long

[2] "Comparisons of altitude tolerance and hypoxia symptoms between nonsmokers and habitual smokers."
Yoneda I, Watanabe Y.
Aviat Space Environ Med. 1997 Sep;68(9):807-11.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9293349

John

Lemonlime, thanks! So much good stuff here to comment on...

Have either you or your husband heard of Aerotoxic Syndrome? I ran across this some time ago when I first read of the flying helps pd story. It is still quite controversial, but there is a group of afflicted former flight personnel fighting to have it recognized as a true medical condition. Although it doesn't sound like PD, it could have easily helped set the stage for its development in your hub.

Aerotoxic Syndrome is the term given to the illness caused by breathing contaminated air in jet aircraft.
It was introduced on 20th October 1999 by Dr Harry Hoffman, Professor Chris Winder and Jean Christophe Balouet, Ph.D.

http://www.aerotoxic.org/


If you look at this and applied your theory to it, one might argue that the hypoxic work environment hides or maybe mitigates the toxic aspect. This too seems an area ripe for exploration. One thing I have found interesting is that doctors and teachers are more likely to develop PD and the common sense link is increased exposure to contagious infections. Well think of the exposure to same in confines of an aircraft cabin, yet I have not seen any studies linking PD and pilots or flight attendants. Again, makes you wonder if the hypoxic environment is protective somehow. We already know that flu can result in PD so the oxygen levels theory must have some merit.

It makes me think of how intermittent fasting is shown to be like 'exercising your brain muscles'. It induces a good stress cycle to "reset" our brains. It sounds like they know intermittent hypoxia has same result and are using it; geez we lag so much in our health system.

http://www.naturalnews.com/035166_in..._calories.html


All of this seems to support Rick’s observation on how the Industrial Revolution marked the beginning of the end for us. We appear to be living examples of natural selection rejects. Obviously, our genomes are not keeping pace with "progress" and technology. Why can't we compare genomes to healthy peeps to see what genetic difference make them impervious to PD? We can! 23andme started doing so this fall. With only 50 members, but this just the beginning...there is hope yet that medical research will be transformed.

Laura

So many things. First, I have given gallons of blood over the years, but it wasn't until I got PD that I had trouble giving blood, or at least recovering from the donation. formerly I could just get up and walk out with no apparent effect, but after getting PD, it took about three days for me to recover my state of equilibrium. I no longer donate blood.

As far as high altitude goes, my story is the following. I and three others with PD summitted Mount Kilimanjaro, 19,340 feet. everyone in our group had our blood oxygen taken every day. mine was consistent at 93 to 95%. My husband was always in the low 70s, but he was fighting a terrible cold at the time. Although I was slow, I had no specific difficulty in getting to the top. I had no symptoms of altitude sickness. I was so focused on getting to my goal that I have no recollection of any specific Parkinson problems. two of the three men with Parkinson's showed strong signs of altitude sickness, reeling like drunks and acting rather oddly. the other guy was so far ahead of me that I never even saw him at top. This past May, 2012, I hiked to Annapurna base camp, 13,500 feet. I hiked an additional 300 feet of elevation to get to the top of the glacial moraine. Again I felt no effects of altitude sickness and no benefit as far as my Parkinson's symptoms were concerned. in both situations my tremor was much worse the colder it got. I could not hold silverware, a cup to drink out of, or eat a bowl of soup.

Everyone who knows me will testify that my Parkinson's certainly did not benefit from the Kilimanjaro hike and in fact I lost ground. That did not seem to be the case with the Annapurna trek. This summer we are going to hike the Inca Trail, with the highest altitude being 14,800 feet going over a pass. I know this is anecdotal, but it is my experience.