How to Stop the Progression of Parkinson’s

Have you noticed how diseases are now reduced to initials? Coronary artery disease is now CAD. Seasonal affective disorder is SAD. Parkinson’s disease is PD.

I can’t tell you how aggravating it is when a patient contacts me to ask me if I can help with XYZ or some other initial. I’d like to answer, but most of the time I have no idea what they are talking about.

And now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’d like to tell you an amazing statistic about RBD and why it is so important for PD.

Just in case you didn’t know, RBD stands for REM Behavior Disorder. Whoops, there we go again with another set of initials. REM is a stage of sleep. It stands for Rapid Eye Movement. And that makes RBD the only initials disorder I know about that has initials within the initials! Back to REM. REM refers to the part of sleep in which we dream. During REM sleep, our eyes undergo rapid movements. RBD is a sleep disorder in which all kinds of unusual behaviors happen during REM sleep.

People with RBD physically move around during sleep. They can also talk, shout, scream, and even hit or punch their bed partner. And that’s just half of it. Sometimes they sleepwalk and even do activities associated with waking, even though their brains are technically still asleep. Here’s why RBD is so important.

According to a recent review article on Parkinson’s disease, “RBD has a very high predictive value, with approximately 50% of affected individuals developing Parkinson’s or dementia within 10 years.” That 50% number is incredibly high! I’ve already reported to you in the past about two other conditions that signal the possibility of Parkinson’s disease. They are a loss of smell or taste and the onset of depression.

If you have any of these conditions, you’re at risk of developing either Parkinson’s, dementia, or both. That’s the bad news. The good news is that research shows you can prevent these diseases if you take the right measures soon enough. Here’s what you can do.

The amino acid L-cysteine gets converted in the brain to the amino acid glutathione. Glutathione is a powerful protector of cells damaged in Parkinson’s and dementia.

For years now, I’ve been giving my Parkinson’s patients N-acetylcysteine (NAC). I can tell you that at high enough doses, it stops the disease from progressing. The dose of NAC that I use is 600 mg twice a day.

The other nutrient I use is melatonin. Studies in animals that were given a drug that causes Parkinson’s show that if these animals are given melatonin in high enough doses, they don’t get the disease. The melatonin dose is 120 mg taken about 45 minutes before bedtime.

Both NAC and melatonin are natural and completely safe. NAC is very tolerable, however, there is a small percentage of people who have symptoms of either disturbed sleep and/or grogginess in the morning from that dose of melatonin. If you notice these symptoms, try taking the melatonin about 2-3 hours before bedtime. If the symptoms do not go away with that strategy, then the only other recourse you have is to lower the dose to an acceptable level.

Yours for better health,

Frank Shallenberger, MD