Can Sound Slow Parkinson's?

Q: I've heard you mention how certain types of sound overtones can apparently slow the progression of Parkinson's disease. What kind of music activates the body's healing system? What else do you recommend to stop or slow the progression of the disease?

By Andrew Weil M D
Published on March 23, 2009 -


A: Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological process affecting the "substantia nigra," a small area of cells in the midbrain. Loss of these cells results in a reduction in levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine and upsets the balance between dopamine and another brain chemical, acetylcholine. The most familiar signs of the disease are resting tremor (trembling) of the arms, legs, jaw and face that decreases with movement; a generalized slowness of movement; stiffness in the limbs and trunk; rigid facial expressions; and problems with balance or gait. Mental function can deteriorate in advanced cases, and depressiondefine is common.

Several small studies have suggested that music therapy can slow the progression of Parkinson's. One of the best-known clinical trials, from Italy, found that music therapy positively affected movement, emotions and quality of life among a small group of patients. Other research has suggested that some types of music can stimulate production of dopamine and serotonin, another neurochemical involved in Parkinson's. There's not one type of music that helps everyone. Music therapists report that with each patient, they must try various rhythms or music styles to see which ones help with walking, balance and movement. However, sometimes slow, rhythmic music can help promote relaxation and sleep among patients who would otherwise be wakened by involuntary movements.

Consider working with a music therapist to investigate whether music benefits you (to learn more, visit the American Music Therapy Association at www.musictherapy.org). On your own, however, you can listen to various types of music to see what helps you move, prompts you to sing (and thus strengthens your voice) or helps you relax and sleep.

While there's no cure for Parkinson's, a variety of drugs including L-Dopa (Levodopa) and Sinemet (Carbidopa) can slow its progression and help manage symptoms. L-Dopa is converted to dopamine in the brain. Sinemet prevents L-Dopa from being broken down before it reaches the brain.

Findings from a small study (with only 80 participants) at the University of California, San Diego, suggest that taking 1,200 mg per day of coenzyme Q (CoQ10) can also help slow progression of the disease in its early stages, although these are very high doses and quality supplements can be quite expensive. Before we can say for sure that CoQ10 helps, the results must be confirmed in larger studies.

"Ask Dr. Weil" does not provide specific medical advice and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other health-care professional. You should always consult your physician to discuss specific symptoms and conditions.

COPYRIGHT 2009 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE and Weil Lifestyle, LLC

Reproductive factors may protect women from Parkinson's disease
15 Mar 2009

A large new study provides evidence that longer exposure to the body's own hormones may protect women from Parkinson's disease. The study has been released and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 to May 2, 2009.


The study found that women who have more years of fertile lifespan (number of years from first menstruation to menopause) had a lower risk of developing the disease than women with fewer years of fertile lifespan. The fertile lifespan is a marker for the body's own sex hormone levels. In addition, women with four or more pregnancies were at greater risk of developing the disease than women with fewer pregnancies. Separately, the risk of Parkinson's disease was increased in women who had hysterectomies and had also previously taken hormone replacement therapy compared to those who never took hormone therapy, but it was not increased in women who took the hormones but had not had hysterectomies.

"These findings suggest that longer duration of exposure to the body's own (endogenous) hormones may help protect the brain cells that are affected by Parkinson's disease. Further investigation is necessary to explain why women with four or more pregnancies are at increased risk compared with those with fewer pregnancies. This study does not support a role for treatment with hormone therapy in Parkinson's, but there are still many unanswered questions," said study author Rachel Saunders-Pullman, MD, MPH, MS, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, NY, and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, NY, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.

For the study, researchers analysed the records of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study to determine who developed Parkinson's disease. The study involved about 74,000 women who underwent natural menopause and about 7,800 women who underwent surgical menopause.

Among women with natural menopause, those who had a fertile lifespan of more than 39 years, which is a time associated with higher levels of the body's own sex hormones, had about a 25 percent lower risk of developing the disease than women with a fertile lifespan shorter than 33 years. Researchers also looked at the number of pregnancies, and women who had four or more pregnancies were about 20 percent more likely to develop Parkinson's disease than women who had three or fewer pregnancies.

Women who had menopause from surgery had almost twice the risk of developing the disease if they had previously taken hormone therapy and stopped than if they had never taken hormone therapy. Taking hormones did not have any effect on Parkinson's risk for women who had natural menopause.

Because Parkinson's disease is more common in men than in women, researchers have long hypothesised about the role of hormones in the disease.

(Source: American Academy of Neurology: American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting: March 2009)

SATURDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- President Barack Obama will lift the eight-year ban on embryonic stem cell research on Monday, the White House has announced.
A White House ceremony is scheduled for late morning, when Obama will issue an executive order formally removing the federal funding limits imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, in 2001.
And while The New York Times reports that it may take many months for the National Institutes of Health to develop new guidelines for research, researchers were already applauding the president's actions.
The availability of federal funding for research on cell lines that had been off-limits during the Bush administration, coupled with billions of newly available dollars in federal stimulus money, could set the stage for a tidal wave of support that could propel stem cell research well into the next decade -- if things move quickly, said a prepared statement from Stanford University researchers in California.
This action is both welcome and overdue, added Dr. Philip Pizzo, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine and a governing board member of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, in the statement. This vote of confidence from President Obama in the promise of embryonic stem cell research validates and extends CIRM's mission to help millions of people suffering from currently incurable medical conditions. It is also a powerful signal that advances in medical research must be pursued even in times of economic difficulty.
Peter T. Wilderotter, president and CEO of the Christopher And Dana Reeve Foundation in Short Hills, N.J., said in a prepared statement, With a stroke of his pen, President Obama acknowledged the will of the majority of Americans and harnessed the power of the federal government to move research forward. By removing politics from science, President Obama has freed researchers to explore these remarkable stem cells, learn from them and possibly develop effective therapies using them.
The general enthusiasm followed a wave of similar sentiments last month when initial reports of the new policy came out of a closed-door meeting between Obama and House Democrats.
It's going to remove an embarrassment for American science, said Dr. Darwin Prockop, director of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Scott & White Hospital in Temple, said in February. It's a statement that we're going to again believe in science.
Stem cell research received a big boost in January, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first-ever human trial using embryonic stem cells as a medical treatment.
Geron Corp., a California-based biotech company, was given the OK to implant embryonic stem cells in eight to 10 paraplegic patients who can use their arms but can't walk.
In 2001, then-president Bush limited federal funding for stem cell research only to human embryonic stem cell lines that already existed.
The decision prompted some scientists to worry that the United States would fall behind other countries in the drive to unlock the potential of stem cell research.
Embryonic stem cells are the most basic human cells, believed to be capable of growing into any type of cell in the body. Working as a sort of repair system for the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish other cells. The scientific hope is that stem cells may, at some point in the future, become capable of treating a variety of diseases and conditions, such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes, heart disease and spinal cord injuries, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
National polls continue to find that the majority of Americans favors embryonic stem cell research, although some surveys have found that that support has declined somewhat in recent years.
Many people object to the use of embryonic stem cells, contending that the research requires the destruction of potential life, because the cells must be extracted from human embryos.
The stem cells being used in the recently approved Geron trial were obtained from one of the Bush administration's approved stem cell lines. And no federal funds were used in the development of this treatment.
Since the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research took effect, many research institutions have redirected their focus to other types of stem cells. Prockop's institution, for instance, deals only with adult stem cells.
Adult stem cells can give rise to all the specialized types of cells found in tissue from which they originated, such as skin. But, scientists don't agree on whether adult stem cells may yield cell types other than those of the tissue from which they originate, according to the National Institutes of Health.
More information
To learn more about stem cells, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

By NICHOLAS WADE, New York Times
March 5, 2009

In a striking instance of biologists' new prowess at manipulating human cells, researchers at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge have converted skin cells from people with Parkinson's disease into the general type of neuron that is destroyed in the disease.

The new approach, though it requires much further work, would in principle allow the brain cells that are lost in Parkinson's to be replaced with cells that carried no risk of immune rejection, since they would be the patients' own.

The Whitehead scientists, reporting in Thursday's issue of the journal Cell, said that the method worked in five patients whose skin cells were transformed in the test tube into neurons that produce dopamine, a chemical that transmits messages between neurons in certain regions of the brain. It is the loss of dopamine-producing nerve cells that leads to the symptoms of Parkinson's.

The immediate goal of the research, led by Frank Soldner and Rudolf Jaenisch, is to grow the dopamine-producing cells in the lab to seek the cause of the disease. The cells could be exposed to the various environmental toxins that have come under suspicion as possible contributory causes of Parkinson's.

Improvement on a discovery

A longer-term goal is to prepare cells suitable for transplantation. The cells of a Parkinson's patient presumably have some innate predisposition to the disease. But since the disease generally does not show up for 50 years or more, an infusion of new cells may give the patient more useful years.

The Whitehead team exploited a discovery made in 2007 by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who found that mature cells could be reprogrammed back to the embryonic state with surprising ease. The trick is to insert a handful of genes that are active in the embryonic cell, usually on the back of a virus since viruses are adept at delivering active genes into cells.

With the patients' skin cells converted back to the embryonic state, the Whitehead scientists used an established recipe for driving the embryonic cells down a different path, converting them into dopamine-making neurons.

Another scientific team achieved this goal last year, but left the virus inside the cells. Virus-laden cells are unsuitable for transplant. In addition, the Whitehead team found the virus caused subtle differences in the cells' activity. So they developed a way of snipping the virus out of cells once it had completed its mission. Their dopamine-producing neurons are free of the virus and the three extra genes required for reprogramming the skin cells.

Jaenisch said the real promise of the new approach was to provide Parkinson-type neurons that could be grown in the laboratory to study how the disease develops.