Integrative Medicine

I recently met with Aly Cohen, MD in my initial appointment for one hour, bringing with me pages of questionnaires that I had filled out beforehand. I had also my blood test from this year, my food allergy test from 2010 and the intuitive healer's diet recommendations from the year before. The questionnaires she looked at before she called me into the examining room, and had highlighted certain parts.

one of my colored pencil drawings

Doctor Cohen is young, at least compared to me, and energetic, bright and well informed about environmental and dietary effects on autoimmune diseases. She is also a rheumatologist. She is editing a book with Andrew Weill, the alternative medicine guru, and has a website called The Smart Human and a Facebook page of the same name where she regularly posts tips on healthy living.

http://www.alycohenmd.com/the-smart-human-.html

A lot was crammed into that one hour, questions from her, history from me and then recommendations. She had a Parkinson's Protocol  developed with Dr. Weill that contained supplements for my population. I bought from her ones she had on hand and she gave me also some starter quantities of ones she did not have to sell. A total of 9 supplements, one was a good multi-vitamin, some common vitamins such as E and C and others were more obscure to me such as Ubiquinol and Alpha-lipoic Acid. The dosages are important, many are high dosages.



The tenth supplement was Melatonin for sleep, one important factor in healing that I am not getting enough of. She recommended in this case a very low dosage, 1/2 of one milligram pill.

Other than supplements, she recommends for Parkinson's a diet with lots of vegetables, fruit, meat if desired, nuts, and seeds, that is low in carbs, sugar, dairy, wheat and other gluten foods.

As for the rest, the recommendations for drinking clean water, exercise and emotional health, I am doing what I should. Though I have stress in my life, one of the factors that creates illness, I have some strategies, and plans for more if necessary to help me. I use a Berkey water filter, and am working out 3X/week at the boxing gym (see my last post). The conclusion she made was that I am a healthy woman EXCEPT for the one little glitch - not so little - PD.



PD is a fight I am taking on more in earnest now that it is surfacing above the meds, necessitating more pills and hence the onset of side effects. I have another appointment with Dr. Cohen in 6 weeks. By then I will have introduced each of the supplements and have had 2 months of boxing. There is more I could do, and converting my diet is one of those things.




I will do what I can. I have not been very disciplined in some things. The trick is to find ways to get myself to work on them. Slow work, stubborn habits, weak will. It's not easy. The support of a trusted MD could be the key.

Rock Steady Boxing

making a tough face or trying to

My local Title Boxing gym has started a Rock Steady Boxing program for PDers, and my recently diagnosed neighbor Mary and I signed up. Car pooling together, we have now completed 2 weeks of classes consisting of three 70 minutes classes per week.

We arrive at 1:15 at the latest and put on our wraps, the long, cloth bands that we wrap around our wrists, hands and fingers to protect them. We have a "get to know you" activity with our two other classmates, like throwing a ball and saying something about ourselves. We do warm ups and stretches. Then the real workout begins.

For the next 50 minutes or so we go from one exercise to another. Each day is different, but all parts of our body are challenged to increase endurance, balance, agility, strength and dexterity. We get 1 minute active rests, then 3 minutes of hard exercise. That's typical.

ugly Christmas sweater day

And always at some point we put on our mitts and box. We've learned all the punches: jab, cross, hook, undercut. We punch the heavy bags, the speed bag, the bag for undercuts, and the crazy one on elastic ropes that flies back at you.





We've learned the stance and how to move around the bag. We've punched the oversized mitts that the coaches hold out on their hands and the big belt they wear, like armor, around their torso. Then we end by freestyle punching as hard as we can, then as fast as we can, then hard again. We're encouraged to make noise - yell while we do it.

truly an ugly sweater

We are sweating and exhausted, but after more stretching, and a group cheer, I always feel good, and glad I'm done. We leave by 2: 45. With dressing, travel, shower, it takes up about 2 1/2 hours of my day.



Guiding and pushing us to go beyond our own idea of our limits are our two coaches, Sharon and Andy. They have been trained by the Rock Steady Boxing organization. It was started in the midwest by a man with Parkinson's whose friend introduced him to boxing. He found his symptoms improving after 6 weeks of training. His Rock Steady program is spreading to gyms all around the country. The one here in West Windsor, New Jersey just started their program.




I feel lucky to have this resource near me. It is not what I would have chosen first. If there was a Tai Chi/Qi Gong center near here I might have chosen that, but there isn't anything nearby. It is hard, hard, hard, but there are fun elements (for instance the Christmas sweater day). And I have Mary, a gym buddy to drive with and to keep each other motivated.

My nickname, chosen by me is"Audacious Clay." Just call me "Clay." And keep your mitts up.