THANK YOU, PROFESSOR DORSEY! The Parkinson Pandemic - A Call to Action

THANK YOU, PROFESSOR DORSEY!
"For too long, the Parkinson's community has been too silent on these issues. Imitating the AIDS community's motto that 'silence equals death,' the Parkinson's  community must make their voices heard. The

 current and future burden of this debilitating disease depends on their action."

Dr. Ray Dorsey and Dr. Bastiaan R. Bloem, neurologists Final excerpt from their 2017 "A Call to Action", published in the prestigious American Medical Association (JAMA) journal of Neurology.

 

 

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(Pure orthodoxy and we find it strange: 3 well-known neurologists, the Michael J Fox Foundation, Neurology, JAMA Neurology...)

Dr Dorsey, professor of Neurology at the prestigious Rochester School of Medicine in New York (USA), has stepped forward and warned us. No one will be able to say that he did not know. He did so in 2007. He did it again in 2018. No longer with forecasts but with realities.

The current and future "Pandemic" of Parkinson's. In 2015 there are twice as many Parkinson's patients as in 1990. And in 2040 they could be twice as many as today. Or triple.

2007: Dr. Earl Ray Dorsey, published a study in Neurology, whose predictions about the future of Parkinson's cases in the world in the coming decades had much impact in the media and alarmed readers. It will double by 2030 and triple by 2050. But nothing happened.

About 3 million in 1990
6.2 million by 2015
12.9 in 2040?

2017: A call to action. Compare the world of AIDS so active in changing so many things, to the world of Parkinson's that seems asleep, silent. It invites the community, especially the patients to mobilize, to be more active in the search for realities now.

2018: A Parkinson's pandemic?

Talking about a "pandemic" even if it's not an infectious disease, is a good way to get attention.

Not only has Dorsey done it in 2018, with the support of two famous neurologists like Michael S. Okun and Bastiaan R. Bloem (we mentioned it earlier for literally prescribing physical exercise to his patients), but also Todd Sherer, a senior executive or CEO of the Michael J Fox Foundation.

From 1990 to 2015 the number of Parkinson's patients worldwide (in the 10 to 15 most populated countries in the world) has doubled. Not in 2030 but already in 2015.

And a book supported by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, signed by Sherer, Dorsey, Okun and Bloem, is also published. The same people who sign the 2018 study mentioned below.

COMMENTARY.

I've been waiting years for something like this. Different ideas, we need associations, foundations, authors, who think and write outside the "labyrinth".

The refreshing breeze from an open window into the world of Parkinson's.

In my opinion, we live in a deeply sick and "sickening" world, which protects the brain very little and has many elements that damage it. We could say that we live in a society or in a very neurodegenerative environment: less tobacco, more age, little magnesium, deficiencies of primary and secondary vitamins, too much junk food with additives, pesticides, toxins everywhere, trans fats, drugs that produce parkinsonism (PIF), etc.

Marathons, tango and boxing seem to me to be very good. But I think it is just as important to control homocysteine, to end the 45-year taboo on moderate amounts of vitamin B6 (as many neurologists and the prospectus of levodopa drugs say), to have preventive policies throughout society with green tea polyphenols, vitamin B2 (51% less risk), vitamin B9 (49% less risk), etc.

I say this with all due respect, but firmly. If we do not heed the warning of Dorsey, Bloem and Okun, the world of the next few decades is going to be a very complicated place.

We talk about the economic and social burden of these figures, I prefer to talk about suffering. There is no scale to measure it yet. That of the sick and their loved ones. The rest matters little to me.

The support of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Dorsey's study and the book they have written makes me regain hope and see light at the end of the tunnel.

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Dorsey (2007). Projected number of people with Parkinson disease in the most populous nations, 2005 through 2030. Neurology.

Dorsey (2017). The Parkinson Pandemic - A Call to Action. JAMA Neurol.

Dorsey (2018). The Emerging Evidence of the Parkinson Pandemic. J Parkinsons Dis.