Tag Archives: Parkinson’s disease

Straight, No Chaser In the News: Muhammad Ali and Parkinson's Disease

Neurology, , , , , , , , ,

parkinsonsali

We all mourn the passing and celebrate the life of Muhammad Ali, once the most famous athlete on the planet and certainly the most beloved. He died from complications of Parkinson’s disease, which you’ve surely heard many, many times. That which you likely know about Parkinson’s disease came from seeing its effects in Ali and/or Michael J. Fox. We honor his memory in this space by providing an understanding of the illness that defined the latter part of his life.
What is Parkinson’s?

  • Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a one of a few diseases called movement disorders based on the symptoms produced. It is the result of nerve cells in the brain not producing enough of a brain chemical called dopamine.

parkinsonstats

What causes PD? Who is likely to get it?

  • Sometimes PD is genetic, but most cases don’t run in families. It seems that any of a variety of conditions that damage the brain’s nerve cells can result in PD. For example, exposure to chemicals in the environment might play a role. Similarly, brain trauma such as occur to boxers at the end of their careers also seems to play a role.
  • PD is more common in men than in women. Symptoms usually begin around age 60.

parkinson

What are the symptoms of PD?

  • Remember that PD is a movement disorder, and it is progressive. Oddly, symptoms often begin on one side of the body and then slowly progress to affect both sides. The four primary symptoms of PD are tremor (trembling in one’s hands, arms, legs, jaw, and face); rigidity (stiffness of the limbs and trunk); bradykinesia (slowness of movement); and postural instability (impaired balance and coordination). The net result of these symptoms over time often is difficulty walking, talking, or completing other simple tasks, such as sleeping, chewing, swallowing or speaking.

parkinsonsnotest

How is PD diagnosed?

  • PD is diagnosed largely via a medical history and physical examination. No lab test exists for diagnosis.

How is PD treated?

  • There is no cure for PD, and medicines used to increase dopamine levels in the brain fluctuate in effectiveness, largely reflecting the variation in damage to the brain. Some medicines are highly effective in some patients. In severe cases, sometimes surgery and deep brain stimulation via the delivery of electrical pulses to parts of the brain controlling movement can help.

parkinsonsalifox

What is the prognosis?

  • As mentioned, PD has no cure and is a chronic, progressive disorder. Left untreated, symptom will persist and get worse over time. The variety in expression of symptoms is matched with a variety in the intensity and progression. Obviously, one’s best bet is early identification and continual treatment.

What is the link with boxing?

  • It is more accurate to say boxing increases the risk of PD than to say it causes it. However, PD is directly linked to head injury and acute head trauma, and individuals who have suffered head injury are four times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those who have never suffered head trauma.

aliolympics

RIP to The Greatest. If you or a loved one develop tremors or other symptoms as described above, please get promptly evaluated.
Feel free to ask your SMA expert consultant any questions you may have on this topic.
Order your copy of Dr. Sterling’s new book Behind The Curtain: A Peek at Life from within the ER at jeffreysterlingbooks.com, iTunes, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles and wherever books are sold.
Thanks for liking and following Straight, No Chaser! This public service provides a sample of what http://www.SterlingMedicalAdvice.com (SMA) and 844-SMA-TALK offers. Please share our page with your friends on WordPress, like us on Facebook @ SterlingMedicalAdvice.com and follow us on Twitter at @asksterlingmd.
Copyright © 2016 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC · Powered by WordPress

Straight, No Chaser: Superfoods – The Battle of Antioxidants and Free Radicals

Diet and Nutrition, General Health and Wellness, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Antioxidants
People engage in a lot of fads and off the wall activity to pursue health instead of following tried and true principles of basic science. One thing that I wish didn’t fit that trend is use of supplemental antioxidants. Before talking about using antioxidants, this Straight, No Chaser will discuss why they’re necessary.
Free radicals are like the Tasmanian Devil. These molecules are byproducts of many activities that create cell damage. Think about cigarette smoke, trauma (even vigorous exercise), excessive heat and sunlight (and its radiation), to name a few examples. The process of creating and releasing these molecules is called oxidation. The key point is free radicals are unstable and too many of them lead to a process called oxidative stress. This process is implicated in the development of many illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cataracts and other eye diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.

Antioxidants

Antioxidants are substances that prevent or delay cell damage caused by free radicals. Antioxidants may be natural or artificial (e.g. man-made). The healthy diets we’re always asking you to eat (e.g. those high in fruits and vegetables) contain lots of antioxidants; in fact this has a lot to do with why we believe they’re good for us. Superfoods are those especially rich sources of antioxidants, as illustrated above.
Of course, now you can get many forms of antioxidants in pills. That’s where things get a little less certain. Logically, you’d think that if some antioxidants are good, a lot would be better, and they would really be effective against free radicals. Furthermore, you’d think a convenient and efficient way of doing this would be putting a lot of antioxidants in a pill. Unfortunately, medical science (including over 100,000 people studied) has shown this not to be as simplistic as our logic would have us believe. I can’t say this any simpler. Antioxidant supplements have not been shown to be helpful in preventing disease. In fact, high-dose supplementation has been shown to have harmful effects, including increasing the risks of lung and prostate cancer. In short, our body doesn’t function in as linear a manner as we would like to think.
Here’s your take home message: We have yet proven that we’re able to cheat Mother Nature. You will not find your health in a bottle. Diet and exercise remain the champions of the battle of pursuing good health. Get your antioxidants the old fashioned way – in your fruits and veggies. Here’s a nice chart for your reference.
Top-Antioxidants
 
Thanks for liking and following Straight, No Chaser! This public service provides a sample of what http://www.SterlingMedicalAdvice.com (SMA) and 844-SMA-TALK offers. Please share our page with your friends on WordPress, like us on Facebook @ SterlingMedicalAdvice.com and follow us on Twitter at @asksterlingmd.
Copyright © 2015 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC

Straight, No Chaser: The Risks and Benefits of Coffee

General Health and Wellness, Diet and Nutrition, , , , , , , , , ,

pros-and-cons-of-coffee-consumption-infographic

Today, I come to praise coffee, not to bury it—and I don’t even drink it. Here’s the point: Coffee is a reasonably healthy beverage choice. The problem with coffee appears to be what you do to it! More about that in a moment. I’d like to review recent findings from a massive study on coffee and health from the Harvard School of Public Health. (Go Crimson!)
Those of you who’ve made a big deal of reducing your coffee intake as a means of improving your health would be much better off focusing on better eating and exercise habits, and on smoking and alcohol cessation. Regarding coffee specifically, it’s important to state that any discussion of the risks and benefits of coffee are in reference to black coffee. If you’re guzzling high calorie coffee products with lots of sugar, whipped cream, caramel and other additives that increase calories and fat, you’ve migrated to an entirely different conversation, and that one isn’t so pleasant.
Coffee has beneficial health effects, including the following:

  • It may protect against Type 2 diabetes.
  • It may protect against Parkinson’s disease.
  • It may protect against liver cirrhosis and liver cancer.
  • People who regularly drink coffee actually have a somewhat lower risk of death from heart disease than those who rarely drink coffee.

The “problem with coffee” is more about what you do while you’re drinking coffee.

  • Drinking coffee often occurs while smoking cigarettes, and if you’re a smoker you’re not getting any health benefits from pretty much anything associated with that activity.
  • People who drink coffee are less likely to exercise and use dietary supplements, and they tend to have a less healthy diet.
  • The weight of evidence on whether coffee increases the risk of heart disease or certain cancers is clearly leaning toward suggesting the negative ramifications are associated with the other habits of coffee drinkers and not the coffee consumption itself.
  • As mentioned earlier and to further the last point, adding syrups, sugars and milks can increase the caloric intake high enough that regular consumption may lead to weight gain and increase your risk for Type 2 diabetes.

What about tea? Chinese data is different than US data. US research has not shown the type of benefits of tea that Chinese research has. It is thought that this is likely due to US tea drinkers consuming weaker varieties of tea, and they tend to drink less of it. (The Chinese studies feature approximately a liter a day of Oolong tea.)
Here are some bottom line considerations:

  • Drinking as much as up to six cups a day of black coffee is not associated with increased risk of death from any cause, including death from cancer or cardiovascular disease.
  • If you are a pregnant female, have difficulty controlling diabetes or high blood pressure, or if coffee gives you tremors or palpitations, you may wish to avoid it.
  • You should brew coffee with a paper filter, to remove a substance that causes increases in LDL cholesterol.
  • Coffee likely has health benefits, but more research needs to be done to definitively state the extent of those benefits.
  • The health benefits of coffee are likely neutralized or overrun by unhealthy substances added to coffee and associated unhealthy habits of coffee drinkers.

Maybe coffee is another of those instances in which Straight, No Chaser is best!
Thanks for liking and following Straight, No Chaser! This public service provides a sample of what http://www.SterlingMedicalAdvice.com (SMA) offers. Please share our page with your friends on WordPress. We are also on Facebook at SterlingMedicalAdvice.com and Twitter at @asksterlingmd.

Copyright © 2013 · Sterling Initiatives, LLC · Powered by WordPress

Straight, No Chaser: The Battle of Antioxidants and Free Radicals

Health Prevention, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Antioxidants
We engage in a lot of fads and off the wall activity to pursue health instead of following tried and true principles of basic science. One thing that I wish didn’t fit that trend is use of supplemental antioxidants. Before talking about using antioxidants, allow me to discuss why they’re necessary.
Free radicals are like the Tasmanian Devil. These molecules are byproducts of many activities that create cell damage. Think about cigarette smoke, trauma (even vigorous exercise), excessive heat and sunlight (and its radiation), to name a few examples. The process of creating and releasing these molecules is called oxidation. The key point is free radicals are unstable and too many of them lead to a process called oxidative stress. This process is implicated in the development of many illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cataracts and other eye diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease.
Antioxidants are substances that prevent or delay cell damage caused by free radicals. Antioxidants may be natural or artificial (e.g. man-made). The healthy diets we’re always asking you to eat (e.g. those high in fruits and vegetables) contain lots of antioxidants; in fact this has a lot to do with why we believe they’re good for us. Of course, now you can get many forms of antioxidants in pills. That’s where things get a little less certain.
Logically, you’d think that if some antioxidants are good, a lot would be better, and they would really be effective against free radicals. Furthermore, you’d think a convenient and efficient way of doing this would be putting a lot of antioxidants in a pill. Unfortunately, medical science (including over 100,000 people studied) has shown this not to be as simplistic as our logic would have us believe. I can’t say this any simpler. Antioxidant supplements have not been shown to be helpful in preventing disease. In fact, high-dose supplementation has been shown to have harmful effects, including increasing the risks of lung and prostate cancer. In short, our body doesn’t function in as linear a manner as we would like to think.
Here’s your take home message: We have yet proven that we’re able to cheat Mother Nature. You will not find your health in a bottle. Diet and exercise remain the champions of the battle of pursuing good health. Get your antioxidants the old fashioned way – in your fruits and veggies. Here’s a nice chart for your reference.
Top-Antioxidants