A New Understanding of Parkinson's disease
|
The Parkinson's Recovery Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to disseminating information about the cause and treatment of Parkinson's disease using the theories and treatment modalities of Oriental medicine.
A new explanation for the underlying causes of Parkinson's disease has arisen through our research. These explanations are based on Asian medicine’s ancient channel theory and on basic, well-known rules of human physiology.
Using the diagnostic techniques of channel theory, it is easily observed that people with both idiopathic Parkinson’s and psychogenic (emotionally-induced) parkinsonism manifest a rare, highly specific channel-flow pattern. (A “channel” might be described in part as one of the many electrical currents in the subcutaneous fascia. These currents run directly below the skin. They can be detected easily by a trained hand.)
The channel flow pattern seen in people with idiopathic Parkinson’s and in psychogenic parkinsonism is one which, in a healthy person, should ordinarily occur in two types of situations: 1) immediately following a significant injury to the leg or foot or 2) when a person has received a severe skin-lacerating injury or has lost a significant amount of blood. Either of these latter situations will cause the body to shift into an emergency mode of the autonomic nervous system. This emergency mode is referred to by animal behaviorists as dissociation, or the dissociative mode. (Be aware that this is a completely different use of the word “dissociation” than that used by psychologists and psychiatrists. The latter use the word “dissociation” to refer to the separating out of some thought or memory from normal consciousness. This is an utterly different meaning from the meaning of “dissociation” that is used by animal behaviorists.)
A severe foot injury, one that interrupts the normal flow of electricity in one of the channels on the foot, can cause the body to slide into a modified dissociative mode. In slightly different fashion, a life-threatening or pre-death injury causes a multiple-channel shift in electrical systems that then triggers, to varying degrees, the dissociative mode.
In the dissociative mode, blood is shunted away from the skin and the extremities. Heart rate is profoundly slowed. Breathing rate is profoundly slowed. Digestion comes to a halt. The body is flooded with endorphins, which inhibit sensations of pain.
Depending on the severity of the dissociative trigger, a person experiencing dissociative mode may or may not become numb to pain or unconscious, may or may not become utterly rigid – as if dead – and/or may or may not perceive himself as experiencing his body’s events as if he were outside of his own body, observing himself rather than having self-awareness via internal, proprioceptive feelings. This last factor is the source of the name, “dissociative” mode: the self-awareness becomes dissociated from inside the body, and becomes externalized.
To continue reading please click here
Important new chapter posted on 08/18/09 CLICK HERE to download
Click on the tabs directly below for more information. |
The Parkinson's Recovery Project
WE HELP PEOPLE
Since 1998, our organization has sponsored several Parkinson’s related projects: small research projects in which people with Parkinson’s have been treated for free; low-cost or free classes and/or private instruction in the techniques that we use for treating people with Parkinson’s disease; free publications (via this website), free technical support for health practitioners via email. In the past, we offered a free clinic under the auspices of Five Branches Institute, an acupuncture college in Santa Cruz, California, which treated people with Parkinson’s disease.
Our newest, upcoming project, still in the planning stage, will be a research collaboration with the HeartMath Institute: we will use heart and brain-wave coherence monitors developed by the HeartMath institute to assess the validity of our hypotheses regarding the heart dissociation that we’ve observed in people with Parkinson’s disease. A subsequent project will determine whether or not the biofeedback monitors can help people with Parkinson’s learn to undo the heart dissociation, which, in turn, usually allows healing of the injury that causes the electrical disarray that we’ve found in people with Parkinson’s disease: an electrical disarray which, according to Asian medicine’s channel theory, should cause symptoms that match, exactly, the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease – including a reversible dormancy of dopamine-producing cells.
If these research ideas sound bizarre, and unrelated to the dead-dopamine-cell hypothesis, an aging hypothesis which Parkinson’s researchers admit does not explain all the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, please read the results of our previous research, described in detail in the free book, Blink of an Eye: Recovery from Parkinson’ Disease. The book is available on the Publications page of this website. Click here to go to the Publications page.
Many people with Parkinson’s disease who have been in our program have experienced symptoms consistent with recovery from Parkinson’s. Some no longer have any symptoms of Parkinson’s – and remain symptom-free without further treatment. We feel that our program may hold an important key to the effective treatment of Parkinson's disease. While it may take more than twenty years (the norm for paradigm-shifting research) before our findings even begin to be accepted by the greater medical community, we feel that this information may be significant and therefore wish to make it available to the general public.
We are incorporated in the state of California. Our non-profit status has been approved by the United States I.R.S (Internal Revenue Service). Our board of directors includes doctoral level and master’s level acupuncturists.
Our Team
The project leader is Dr. Janice Walton-Hadlock, DAOM (Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine), a teacher at Five Branches University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Cruz, California.
Her writings, describing various aspects of our research in this field, have been published as articles in numerous peer-reviewed acupuncture journals. Her larger works, a book about the theory, cause, and treatment of Parkinson's and a book about antiparkinson's medications, are published by the Parkinson's Recovery Project and are available on this website.
Her entry into publication in western medical journals is very recent; her rebuttal to a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) 2004 article on antiparkinson's medication, based on her four-year study of antiparkinson's medications, was published in the March 31, 2005 issue of the NEJM.
Other research team members are Chris Ells, LAc, (doctoral degree pending), Rebecca Weinfeld, LAc, RN, MTCM (Master’s degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Laura Walter, LAc., MTCM.
Chris Ells teaches at Five Branches University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Rebecca Weinfeld, in addition to being a licensed acupuncturist, craniosacral therapist, and nutritional consultant, has many years of experience as a psychiatric nurse. Laura Walter is a craniosacral therapist, as well as a licensed acupuncturist. All four members of the research team have been working extensively with people with Parkinson’s since the late 1990s.
Publications:
As of August, 2008, a completely overhauled edition of Trouble Afoot: Tracking down the Causes and Cures of Parkinson’s Disease, was posted on this website. This edition replaced the previously titled “Recovery From Parkinson’s Disease. The book is nearly completed. Those chapters that are finished are available for free download from this website. This book includes the theory, treatment techniques, and treatment plan that we use in successfully treating Parkinson's disease. (As an aside, the title originally used in 2008 was Almost Icarus. That new title for the book previously published as was discarded when it became apparent that very few people were familiar with the Greek myth of Icarus or its metaphoric references.) Click here to go to Trouble Afoot: Tracking down the Causes and Cures of Parkinson's Disease.
The Medications of Parkinson's Disease – or – Once Upon A Pill, is the result of four years of research on the various medications of Parkinson's disease and explains how the medications work, how they are supposed to be prescribed (they are rarely prescribed correctly), what happens to people who are taking anti-parkinson's medications if they begin to recover, and our reasons for our recent (2003) decision to not work with anyone who has ever taken anti-parkinson's medications for longer than three weeks. Click here to learn more about this decision. This medications book also has a tremendous amount of material about Parkinson's disease that we learned as a result of observing the changes that occurred in medicated patients during their recovery. Many unmedicated PDers have said that they learned as much about Parkinson's disease from reading the medication book as they did from reading the Recovery from Parkinson's. The various roles of dopamine in regulating attitude, mood, movement, temperature regulation, social stress, illness, and more, is addressed in this book on medication. In general, western style physiology and chemistry of Parkinson's is addressed in the Medication book, and Asian theory about treating channel disorders is in the Practitioner's Handbook. Together, these two books provide an in depth look at the western and Asian understandings of Parkinson's, and the chemical and energetic processes that contribute to this syndrome. Click here to go to The Medications of Parkinson’s – or – Once Upon a Pill.
Donations
Thank you so much for considering making a donation to the Parkinson's Recovery Project.
Your contributions help cover our costs so that we can continue to make our research available for free download. Donations also help pay for the in-house expenses involved in running the Parkinson's Recovery Project.
We hope that you have found our research helpful. If you wish to make a contribution so that others in future may also discover our research or download the free books, we are deeply grateful for your support.
The Parkinson's Recovery Project is a non-profit organization incorporated in California. Donations to the Parkinson's Recovery Project are tax-deductible.
Credit Card Donation
To make a donation using a credit card or PayPal, please click on the donate button.
You will receive an emailed receipt for your taxes.
Donation by check
If you prefer to make a donation via regular mail, our mailing address is:
Parkinson's Recovery Project
343 Soquel Ave, Box 413
Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Please make checks payable to Parkinson's Recovery Project. You will be mailed a receipt for your taxes.
Memorial Program
We gratefully accept donations in honor or memory of loved ones.
If you wish to make a donation to honor someone, you may include the following information with your donation: the name of the honoree, and the name and address of a third party that you would like notified. A card will be sent to the third party stating that you have made a donation in the honoree's name.
If you make a memorial donation using a credit card (see above), you may send us the name of the honoree and the name and address of the person to be notified via the following email address: pdinfo@cruzio.com. In your memorial email that has the name and mailing address of person being remembered, please also include your own name or the email address you used to make the donation, so that we can link the memorial request email with the correct donor.
|
