Keeping the Women we Love Healthy

After hearing about all the encouraging news on the progress being made on the research and funding of Parkinson's disease, we are still left with perhaps the most important part of the equation:  The caregiver's perspective on dealing with the challenges of a patient diagnosed with the illness.  Treatment needs to be addressed from two flanks:  The clinical/patient side, and the caregiver side.  From a caregiver’s perspective, there is a pre-Parkinson’s and a post-Parkinson’s life.    A partner who is the healthy one in the marriage --that rarely takes medications, a lover of sports that makes marathon-running a second career; a lover of education with two Master’s degrees, a good dresser and more importantly, a charming and positive thinker with a great outlook of life-- can suddenly become a statistic in the number of patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  This is just a brief, loving summary of how Goldie Sinegal described her...

Jeanne F. Loring, Ph.D., Research Professor, Scripps Research Institute The Doris A. Howell Foundation hosted a panel of Parkinson’s disease specialists who presented the advances in research and the challenges that still lie ahead in the search for a cure for this terrible disease.    The panel presented and discussed topics related to the research advancements currently being conducted, the efforts of the Parkinson’s Disease Association to continue funding Parkinson’s Disease research, testimony from a Parkinson’s patient, the latest in treatment, and a caregiver’s perspective on the challenges of providing care for a Parkinson’s Disease patient.  To understand the advancements made to treat patients with Parkinson’s, it is important to understand what happens in our brain that causes this degenerative disease.   We all have nerve cells that release dopamine, responsible for sending signals to the part of our brain that tells our bodies how and wh...