Recognize The Early Symptoms Of Parkinson’s Disease

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Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative condition with wide-reaching implications for health. While there is currently no known cure, there are treatments, so knowing about it sooner rather than later is important.

Spot The Signs

There are two main kinds of symptoms, motor and non-motor.

Motor symptoms include:

  • trembling that occurs when muscles are relaxed; often especially visible in the fingers
  • handwriting changes—not just because of the above, but also often getting smaller
  • blank expression, on account of fewer instruction signals getting through to the face
  • frozen gait—especially difficulty starting walking, and a reduced arm swing

Non-motor symptoms include:

  • loss of sense of smell—complete, or a persistent reduction of
  • sleepwalking, or sleep-talking, or generally acting out dreams while asleep
  • constipation—on an ongoing basis
  • depression/anxiety, especially if there was no prior history of these conditions

For more detail on each of these, as well as what steps you might want to take, check out what Dr. Luis Zayas has to say:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like to read:

Citicoline vs Parkinson’s (And More)

Take care!

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      Our Verdict

      When comparing beetroot to pumpkin, we picked the beetroot.

      Why?

      It was close! And an argument could be made for either.

      In terms of macros, beetroot has about 3x more protein and about 3x more fiber, as well as about 2x more carbs, making it the “more food per food” option. While both have a low glycemic index, we picked the beetroot here for its better numbers overall.

      In the category of vitamins, beetroot has more of vitamins B6 and B9, while pumpkin has more of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, E, and K. So, a fair win for pumpkin this time.

      When it comes to minerals, though, beetroot has more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while pumpkin has a tiny bit more copper. An easy win for beetroot here.

      In short, both are great, and although pumpkin shines in the vitamin category, beetroot wins on overall nutritional density.

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    • What Mattress Is Best, By Science?

      10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

      The Foundations of Good Sleep

      You probably know the importance of good sleep for good health. If not, here’s a quick refresher:

      You should also definitely check out this quite famous book on the topic:

      Why We Sleep – by Dr Matthew Walker

      What helps, to get that good sleep

      We’ve covered this a little before too, for example:

      How to level-up from there

      One of the biggest barriers to good sleep for many people is obstructive sleep apea:

      Healthier, Natural Sleep Without Obstruction!

      We covered (in the above article) a whole lot of ways of mitigating/managing obstructive sleep apnea. One of the things we mentioned as beneficial was avoiding sleeping on one’s back, and this is something Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Somers agreed with:

      Back Sleeping, And Sleeping Differently After 50

      “But side-sleeping is uncomfortable”

      If this is you, then chances are you have the wrong mattress.

      If your mattress is too firm, you can get around it by using this “five pillow” method:

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      If your mattress is too soft, then sorry, you really just have to throw that thing out and start again.

      The Goldilocks mattress

      While different people will have different subjective preferences, the science is quite clear on what is actually best for people’s spines. As this review of 39 qualified scholarly articles concluded:

      ❝Results of this systematic review show that a medium-firm mattress promotes comfort, sleep quality and rachis alignment❞

      ~ Dr. Gianfilippo Caggiari et al.

      Read in full: What type of mattress should be chosen to avoid back pain and improve sleep quality? Review of the literature

      Note: to achieve “medium-firm” that remains “medium firm” has generally been assumed to require a memory-foam mattress.

      How memory-foam works: memory-foam is a moderately thermosoftening material, designed to slightly soften at the touch of human body temperature, and be firmer at room temperature. This will result in it molding itself to the form of a human body, providing what amounts to personalized support for your personal shape and size, meaning your spine can stay exactly as it’s supposed to when you’re sleeping on your side, instead of (for example) your hips being wider meaning that your lumbar vertebrae are raised higher than your thoracic vertebrae, giving you the equivalent of a special nocturnal scoliosis.

      It will, therefore, stop working if

      • the ambient temperature is comparable to human body temperature (as happens in some places sometimes, and increasingly often these days)
      • you die, and thus lose your body temperature (but in that case, your spinal alignment will be the least of your concerns)

      Here’s a good explanation of the mechanics of memory foam from the Sleep Foundation:

      Sleep Foundation | What is Memory Foam?

      An alternative to memory foam?

      If you don’t like memory foam (one criticism is that it doesn’t allow good ventilation underneath the body), there is an alterative, the grid mattress.

      It’s very much “the new kid on the block” and the science is young for this, but for example this recent (April 2024) study that concluded:

      ❝The grid mattress is a simple, noninvasive, and nonpharmacological intervention that improved adults sleep quality and health. Controlled trials are encouraged to examine the effects of this mattress in a variety of populations and environments.❞

      ~ Dr. Heather Hausenblas et al.

      Read in full: Effectiveness of a grid mattress on adults’ sleep quality and health: A quasi-experimental intervention study

      However, that was a small (n=39) uncontrolled (i.e. there was no control group) study, and the conflict of interest statement is, well, interesting:

      ❝Heather A. Hausenblas, Stephanie L. Hooper, Martin Barragan, and Tarah Lynch declare no conflict of interest. Michael Breus served as a former consultant for Purple, LLC.❞

      ~ Ibid.

      …which is a fabulous way of distracting from the mention in the “Acknowledgements” section to follow, that…

      ❝Purple, LLC, provided financial support for the study❞

      ~ Ibid.

      Purple is the company that invented the mattress being tested. So while this doesn’t mean the study is necessarily dishonest and/or corrupt, it does at the very least raise a red flag for a potential instance of publication bias (because Purple may have funded multiple studies and then pulled funding of the ones that weren’t going their way).

      If you are interested in Purple’s mattress and how it works, you can check it out herethis is a link for your interest and information; not an advertisement or an endorsement. We look forward to seeing more science for this though, and echo their own call for randomized controlled trials!

      Summary

      Sleep is important, and while it’s a popular myth that we need less as we get older, the truth is that we merely get less on average, while still needing the same amount.

      A medium-firm memory-foam mattress is a very good, well-evidenced way to support that (both figuratively and literally!).

      A grid mattress is an interesting innovation, and/but we’d like to see more science for it.

      Take care!

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    • The Truth About Vaccines

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      The Truth About Vaccines

      Yesterday we asked your views on vaccines, and we got an interesting spread of answers. Of those who responded to the poll, most were in favour of vaccines. We got quite a lot of comments this time too; we can’t feature them all, but we’ll include extracts from a few in our article today, as they raised interesting points!

      Vaccines contain dangerous ingredients that will harm us more than the disease would: True or False?

      False, contextually.

      Many people are very understandably wary of things they know full well to be toxic, being injected into them.

      One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are poison, and/or are some manner of conspiracy ” wrote:

      ❝I think vaccines from 50–60 years ago are true vaccines and were safer than vaccines today. I have not had a vaccine for many, many years, and I never plan to have any kind of vaccine/shot again.❞

      They didn’t say why they personally felt this way, but the notion that “things were simpler back in the day” is a common (and often correct!) observation regards health, especially when it comes to unwanted additives and ultraprocessing of food.

      Things like aluminum or mercury in vaccines are much like sodium and chlorine in table salt. Sodium and chlorine are indeed both toxic to us. But in the form of sodium chloride, it’s a normal part of our diet, provided we don’t overdo it.

      Additionally, the amount of unwanted metals (e.g. aluminum, mercury) in vaccines is orders of magnitude smaller than the amount in dietary sources—even if you’re a baby and your “dietary sources” are breast milk and/or formula milk.

      In the case of formaldehyde (an inactivating agent), it’s also the dose that makes the poison (and the quantity in vaccines is truly miniscule).

      This academic paper alone cites more sources than we could here without making today’s newsletter longer than it already is:

      Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation

      I have a perfectly good immune system, it can handle the disease: True or False?

      True! Contingently.

      In fact, our immune system is so good at defending against disease, that the best thing we can do to protect ourselves is show our immune system a dead or deactivated version of a pathogen, so that when the real pathogen comes along, our immune system knows exactly what it is and what to do about it.

      In other words, a vaccine.

      One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are important but in some cases the side effects can be worse ” wrote:

      ❝In some ways I’m vacd out. I got COVid a few months ago and had no symptoms except a cough. I have asthma and it didn’t trigger a lot of congestion. No issues. I am fully vaccinated but not sure I’ll get one in fall.❞

      We’re glad this subscriber didn’t get too ill! A testimony to their robust immune system doing what it’s supposed to, after being shown a recent-ish edition of the pathogen, in deactivated form.

      It’s very reasonable to start wondering: “surely I’m vaccinated enough by now”

      And, hopefully, you are! But, as any given pathogen mutates over time, we eventually need to show our immune system what the new version looks like, or else it won’t recognize it.

      See also: Why Experts Think You’ll Need a COVID-19 Booster Shot in the Future

      So why don’t we need booster shots for everything? Often, it’s because a pathogen has stopped mutating at any meaningful rate. Polio is an example of this—no booster is needed for most people in most places.

      Others, like flu, require annual boosters to keep up with the pathogens.

      Herd immunity will keep us safe: True or False?

      True! Ish.

      But it doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. For example, in the UK, “herd immunity” was the strategy promoted by Prime Minister of the hour, Boris Johnson. But he misunderstood what it meant:

      • What he thought it meant: everyone gets the disease, then everyone who doesn’t die is now immune
      • What it actually means: if most people are immune to the disease (for example: due to having been vaccinated), it can’t easily get to the people who aren’t immune

      One subscriber who voted for “Vaccines are critical for our health; vax to the max! ” wrote:

      ❝I had a chiropractor a few years ago, who explained to me that if the general public took vaccines, then she would not have to vaccinate her children and take a risk of having side effects❞

      Obviously, we can’t speak for this subscriber’s chiropractor’s children, but this raises a good example: some people can’t safely have a given vaccine, due to underlying medical conditions—or perhaps it is not available to them, for example if they are under a certain age.

      In such cases, herd immunity—other people around having been vaccinated and thus not passing on the disease—is what will keep them safe.

      Here’s a useful guide from the US Dept of Health and Human Services:

      How does community immunity (a.k.a. herd immunity) work?

      And, for those who are more visually inclined, here’s a graphical representation of a mathematical model of how herd immunity works (you can run a simulation)!

      Stay safe!

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        Take care!

        Don’t Forget…

        Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

        Learn to Age Gracefully

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