Renaissance

 Hello friends,

So what is the solution to Parkinson’s disease if there is no cure?

Renaissance — being reborn into a new reality that is disconnected from the one that came before it.

In my previous blog post, I told you about my “trip of a lifetime” — a sabbatical that began with three months in Innsbruck, Austria.

It was very successful. Why? One of the reasons is that I felt my Parkinson’s less, and when I returned to Israel a few days ago, I started feeling the symptoms more again.

My hypothesis: my disease developed in Israel, within a reality in which I was dealing with anxieties and stresses that were part of building a family, a career, etc. Living for three months in a new place that does not include the history of my life that led to the development of the disease allows for new growth on what is almost a blank slate — tabula rasa.

Moreover, any new activity that we haven’t engaged in before — for example, for me it was starting to paint or starting to write songs/blogs — is also a form of creation anew, a renaissance, which some of us have already experienced as something that makes us feel better.

How do we test whether this hypothesis is correct? In a few weeks, we’re traveling abroad again — this time for three months in Osaka, Japan. I’ll keep you updated.

I also want to mention that during this period in Innsbruck, I felt that I was super creative — my science soared to new heights, particularly in the context of Parkinson’s research. It may be that this “creative surge” is connected to the improvement in my symptoms. I’ll keep you updated.

Remember my energy theory? That one of the main reasons for the development of the disease is a lack of energy. So, in my lab, we are looking for ways to develop a drug that will give us an energy boost. But that will take time.

What can we do with this information right now? Take into account the fact that we have less energy production, and expend less. Just as when we get into a car, the first thing we do is check the fuel level and plan the journey accordingly. So the question is: how do we know how much energy/fuel we have left in our bodies? One possibility may be to measure the efficiency of our mitochondria — our energy factories — through a standard blood test.

While I was in Innsbruck, I had such a test done and found a specific problem in my mitochondria that has not been reported in the scientific literature. Do other patients have a similar problem that could give us additional clues about the energy-related problem in people with Parkinson’s?

More about this in my next blog post.

Thank you for listening.