STRANGE FACTS ABOUT PARKINSON'S DISEASE

1. Many people in the Pacific island of Guam have developed Parkinson's Disease, due to feasting on flying foxes, a species of bat that can be as big as six feet across. This is because the bats eat cycad seeds which contain a potent neurotoxin.

2. For reasons unknown, Bulgarian Gypsies appear to be almost immune to developing Parkinson's Disease. All other Bulgarians are ten times more likely to get Parkinson's Disease.

3. In 1875, Henri Huchard had a patient that had all of the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease who was only three years old.

4. The Parsi, a Zorastrian community in Bombay, India have almost the world's highest prevalence of Parkinson's Disease due to the poisonng effects of a ritual in which they burn Aspand seeds in order to rid their children of the Evil Eye - a sickness transmitted by someone who is envious, jealous, or covetous.

5. Although L-dopa is widely used to raise L-dopa levels, no other common substance reduces L-dopa formation more than L-dopa itself.

6. Anti-cholinergics, used to treat Parkinson's Disease, are found in nature as Deadly Nightshade, a plant that is so poisonous that just one leaf could kill an adult.

7. Although it is claimed that Parkinson's Disease becomes more likely with age, amongst the very oldest of people, those between 110 and 120 years old, Parkinson's Disease is virtually unknown.

8. L-dopa, in seed form, was being used in India to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease over 6000 years ago.

9. James Parkinson, who Parkinson's Disease was named after, never knew that Parkinson's Disease was called Parkinson's Disease.

10. There are two films of Adolf Hitler's last public appearance, one that was shown in which he displayed no symptoms of Parkinson's Disease, and another that was not shown in which he was displaying the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease.

thanks very informative Keith

6. Anti-cholinergics, used to treat Parkinson's Disease, are found in nature as Deadly Nightshade, a plant that is so poisonous that just one leaf could kill an adult.

Belladonna has been, and is being used as a recreational drug, diuretic, sedative, antispasmodic, mydriatic. It is used very successfully to treat eye diseases, because of its effect of dilating the pupil.

Atropine, an extract of belladonna is what an eye doctor uses when they put liquid in your eye before testing you for glasses. Atropine has also been used as an antidote to opium, calabar bean, and chloroform poisoning.

It has no action on the voluntary muscles, but the nerve endings in involuntary muscles are paralyzed by large doses, the paralysis finally affecting the central nervous system, causing excitement and delirium.

The various preparations of belladonna have many uses. Locally applied, it lessens irritability and pain, and is used as a lotion, plaster or liniment in cases of neuralgia, gout, rheumatism and sciatica.

As a drug, it specially affects the brain and the bladder. In chronic albuminuria, it stimulates the kidneys to healthy action.

Belladonna is one of the most important remedies for bladder and kidney diseases. It stimulates and at the same time relieves irritation of the urinary tract. Both the solid and watery constituents of the urine are increased in amount.

It is the remedy in urinal incontinence in small children when the fault depends upon a poor pelvic circulation or chronic irritability of the bladder. It seems best adapted to that dribbling of urine in the young children.

There has been a marked benefit from minute doses of belladonna in children who urinate every twenty minutes or half hour.

It increases the rate of the heart by some 15 to 45 beats per minute, without lessening its force. This action on body circulation helps those that collapse from pneumonia, typhoid fever and other acute diseases.

Belladonna given in very small doses will protect from the infection of Scarlet fever. It helps ease the pain of a very bad sore throat, and relieves local inflammation and congestion.

Not a fact, but what an interesting find...a Parkinson's disease crossword puzzle!!

Parkinsons Diseases - 15 x 15 - 110806
by B.B. Huria
http://www.myxword.com/XW-wos/Todays...06_080806.html

Has anyone studied the Bulgarian gypsies lifestyle and diet in depth?

Why the Bulgarian Gypsies rarely get Parkinson's Disease has not been explained.

Most of the Bulgarian Gypsies suffer from dire poverty and malnutrition, and have a much lower life expectancy. Even in recent years there have been episodes of starvation amongst them. Despite living in Europe their income and diet are closer to that of a third world country.

When you look at where Parkinson's Disease is most and least common, it appears to be a rich nations illness. Ironically, it appears that somebody has to be healthy enough in order to develop it. In most of the poorest of countries and peoples, Parkinson's Disease is hardly known. However, they usually suffer from something else instead.

love your neighbor*share the wealth by helping in deed

http://san.beck.org/BFA2-AlleviatingPoverty.html


More than half of humanity is suffering in poverty on less than two dollars per day, and more than 1,300,000,000 people are in extreme poverty living on less than one dollar per day. Each year six million children die of malnutrition; 2.2 million children die because they are not immunized; and 1.4 million children die because they do not have safe drinking water or adequate sanitation. The number of people lacking access to clean water is 1.3 billion. Two billion people do not have electricity, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.

At the same time that this ghastly poverty is increasing in the developing world, the wealthy are becoming even richer. The gap between the richest and poorest nations has gone from 3-1 in 1820 to 11-1 in 1913 to 44-1 in 1973 and to 74-1 in 1992. The combined wealth of the world's 7.1 million millionaires is $27 trillion, which is equal to the total annual income of every person on the Earth. By 2005 the world had 691 billionaires with a combined wealth of $2.2 trillion, which is more than twice as much as the gross domestic products (GDP) of all the nations in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1960 Africa was a net exporter of food, but now the continent of Africa imports one third of its grain. More than forty percent of Africans do not have enough food. The twenty percent of the population in the world's developed nations are consuming 86% of the world's goods.

I read some where that Ethiopia has the lowest incidence of Parkinsons. Their average life expectancy is 44 years. I wonder if this is the same for the gypsies?? So are they dying from other causes before they can get it??
One has to wonder what their incidence of young onset is.
Given the Ethiopian's living conditions, that would be a hard ( and dangerous!!) survey to take!

Charlie

Ethiopia does have the lowest recorded prevalence of Parkinson's Disease. The Bulgarian Gypsies do have a much lower life expectancy than other Europeans. Something usually gets them before PD does. If the life expectancy in the U.S. was only 44 as it is in Ethiopia, Parkinson's Disease would be a rare medical disorder in the U.S.A..

Although it is widely assumed that PD is due to low dopamine, it is caused when the potency of acetylcholine (which increases muscle contraction) is greater than that of dopamine (which reduces muscle contraction). So in order to be prone to getting PD somebody must be pretty good at producing acetylcholine. Healthinessin one resepect increases the proneness to illness in another.

Due to the severe malnutrition amongst the Ethiopians and Bulgarian Gypsies, neither would be good at producing acetylcholine, as any one of a number of nutritional deficiencies can prevent acetylcholine from being formed. So their severe malnutrition would make them less prone to developing Parkinson's Disease.

Consequently, I suspect that if they were measured, that the average American with PD actually had much higher dopamine levels than most Ethiopians and Gypses that didn't have PD.

PD is not a disease beginning in the substantia nigra and leading to loss of dopamine. PD starts in the nose, heart, and GI tract, not in the brain. The latter is affected only late in its progression. PD is not just a movement disorder and is not just a disease of the brain.

Yet research dollars are allocated as though it were.