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Book: Brain Storms: The Race to Unlock the Mysteries of Parkinson’s Disease
Author: Jon Palfreman
Review by: Review by: Kevin Conboy, retired partner, Paul Hastings LLP; former president, Irish Chamber of Atlanta
Being a person of a certain age (not too specifically, I am retired, have grandchildren and am eligible for Medicare benefits), I am increasingly learning about medical problems and conditions of which I was formerly oblivious.
At a high school reunion seven or eight years ago, I saw one of my classmates coming up a staircase, slowly and deliberately, clutching the railing. I learned that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. I see my friend just once a year in New York City, but the disease is such that its advance on my friend is obvious every year.
Two years ago, he encouraged me to read the 2015 book Brain Storms: The Race to Unlock the Mysteries of Parkinson’s Disease by Jon Palfreman. The book was so compelling that I immediately turned to my computer to see if the author had written a sequel.
The author, it turns out, is the same age as my classmate and I. An Englishman, Palfreman spent his career as a science journalist, and he’d reported on health issues including Parkinson’s Disease (PD).
In Brain Storms, Palfreman traces the history of the study of PD, including both scientific and medical developments — and many blind alleys. The story he tells is greatly enhanced by his personal observations about his own PD, diagnosed four years before the book was published.
PD has been known since antiquity, it turns out, but was first identified and described in a clinical manner by James Parkinson (1755-1824), an English surgeon and student of philosophy, geology, Latin and Greek, paleontology and politics. In 1817, he published a small monograph about a disease he called “the shaking palsy.”
Early on, it was discovered that PD had its roots in the brain. But research and progress in determining its cause, or causes, have been hampered by both the variety of its apparent causes and the unpredictability of its varied symptoms. Aggressive forms of PD can be rapidly and brutally fatal; other forms and cases can be very mild and slow to develop.
In addition to its harsh physical symptoms, PD can and often does affect the mind. Symptoms can come and go, sometimes responding to treatment, only to be frustratingly replaced by another challenge. My high school friend describes his PD as a “cruel bitch.”
For all the study and work done to devise or locate a cure for this progressive neurological disease, or a treatment that ameliorates the symptoms, the primary methods of treatment have not changed a great deal in recent decades: physical therapy, exercise and mental activity; a healthy diet; and medications that increase or substitute for low levels of dopamine in the brain (ordinarily produced in the brain by healthy individuals).
Actor Michael J. Fox has suffered with PD for more than 30 years. But as evidence of the range of symptoms, varieties and causes, Lewy Body Dementia, also a form of PD, was the affliction of the late actor/comic Robin Williams.
It is not possible for me to recommend this book too highly. Pick it up if you know of anyone who suffers from PD, or if you have an interest in health matters generally.