Hello friends, My blog #7. I want to share with you the progress of our research in understanding the molecular basis of the disease and also the solution I chose to deal with further worsening of my disease. I will start with the solution I chose to deal with my illness. In the last months I have more stiffness and more difficulty walking normally. I met with my amazing neurologist, Dr. Nirit Lev, and after a careful examination she told me that there was no worsening in my indices, but because of my feeling, she recommended that I start taking Cinnament, one of the derivatives of dopamine. It was hard for me to hear her distinction but I felt she was right. It scares me to start taking dopamine, but if it will improve my quality of life, then it's probably worth it. But even so the doubt still nested in me. Is there an "escape route"? In the last months I was under high pressure at work and this may have had an effect on the aggravation. So maybe I'll wait a little ...

Hello friends, I will start by sharing with you an experience I had a few weeks ago at the Weizmann Institute. I was late to a lecture and there were no more available seats, so I sat on the stairs. In my experience, sitting on the stairs allows me a much larger space of movement than sitting on one of the chairs in the hall, crowded with other people. After sitting for a few seconds, I spotted an empty chair between two people and moved to sit on it. I immediately felt discomfort, tightness, but felt helpless. If I get up and go back to the stairs, people will think I am a strange person. However, if I stay in my chair I will feel uncomfortable and will not enjoy the lecture. I got up and went back to sit on the stairs and really enjoyed the lecture. What did I learn from this event? I prefer to have a wide-open space around me. One of the reasons is that an open space allows me to stretch my arms and legs, and this is a need that I have increasingly had in recent years. In addition, ...

Hi friends, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (PD) six years ago, and on the day of the diagnosis I thought: tomorrow I will move to a wheelchair, and a day later I will die.   Well, I'm still alive. My name is Atan Gross, I'm 59, living in a relationship with a woman I love, have two amazing boys Gil (23) and Eyal (21), and I' m a Professor of Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. And - I'm in love with my research on the Biology of Mitochondria, the power plants  of our cells, that generate energy from the food we eat and the oxygen we breath. And in the past few years, I also started to research on how mitochondria malfunction may contribute to the initiation/progression of PD.     I believe that PD "hit me" because I was handling myself in a chronically "too-challenging" manner. This behavior jeopardized my well-being to a point that my body decided to change its life-long strategy of stillness and switch to shaking/t...