Strange facts about Parkinson's Disease
 

thanks very informative Keith

belladonna -"deadly nightshade" -more facts
 

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?

staistics -alleviating poverty -share the wealth
 

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

some more strangeness
 

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.