Parkinson’s after covid

I am impressed by a doctor who is drawing this important connection. There is indeed a growing understanding that the COVID virus may take advantage of pre-existing vulnerabilities in infected patients.

What I am reading about this indicates not exactly an unmasking, but, rather, an exacerbation of a neurological (or deeper metabolic) vulnerability that had not yet become problematically symptomatic prior to the infection.

Before his recent passing, Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, originally of The Cleveland Clinic, began to write about growing evidence that COVID disrupts one or more metabolic pathways that control, at the most fundamental level, neurological and endocrine functions. And because Lonsdale pioneered the field of research addressed to the role of thiamine/B1 deficiency or dependency in sustaining health across all physiological functions (operating in a hugely significant way, for example, in the manufacture of ATP by cell mitochrondria), naturally he became suspicious that some or all of COVIDś destructive effects stemmed from some defect in thiamine metabolism that either developed from the virusś attack, or became much more active in patients who already had subacute thiamine metabolism defects before they caught COVID.

Perhaps you have already, moreover, come across the movement among Parkinson´s patients (regardless of whether they have had COVID at some point) to bring thiamine repletion and supplementation therapy into the toolbox for PD treatment.

Since my mild case of COVID, I have developed a mild (vasomotor) neurological problem limited, so far, to my respiratory system, and it was after I read about the use of thiamine protocols among Parkinson´s patients that I launched into a search for findings about my particular neurological problem and whether it has been associated with thiamine defects (either in the presence of or without exposure to COVID). In that process, I discovered that some lifelong neurological and immunological issues that I regularly experience have all been studied and linked to thiamine metabolism defects.

Rather than here supplying citations to the materials that have enlightened me about thiamine, I would urge you to gather all you can about this by simple online research. Lots of peer-reviewed journals are available online. And Dr. Lonsdaleś monumental body of work on thiamine and dysautonomia, for example (a neurological disorder that can affect any body system and that manifests as a wide range of potential health issues) appears in several different journals that are available online. I recently purchased his book on the subject (co-authored several years ago with neuro-endocrine scholar Chandler Marrs), and while much of the book is beyond my grasp, the thrust of the work is clear and incredibly hope-sustaining, in my view.

I hope your mother will ask her physician about whether s/he is familiar with the use of thiamine repletion/supplementation in Parkinsonś patients. There is an effort currently under way to raise funds for supporting a large clinical trial designed to pinpoint thiamineś effectiveness in Parkinsonś patients, across a range of variables. A memoir by a Parkinsonś patient who received thiamine therapy under the care of a highly regarded clinician in Italy is available on Amazon, and in it, this patient describes in detail the protocol that she followed and the life-changing results that she believes she achieved.

And, if you like, please try to find my many other posts about thiamine and COVID across multiple subgroups of Mayo Clinicś overarching long COVID Mayo cluster. In some of these, I have shared my own protocols, which I always qualify as in the trial and error stage, still. My internal medicine PCP supports my pursuit of thiamine therapy, but she is leaving it to me to come up with a protocol that may work best for me. Because thiamine is a vitamin for which there is no known toxic level (though side-effects are possible and even to be expected as one increases dose levels and experiences thiamineś famous ¨paradoxical reactions¨), my physician is on board so far. Slow but steady seems to be the pathway with thiamine supplementation, and each patient seems to have a unique set of affinities for the various forms of this master vitamin (which include mononitrate, HCl, TTFD, allithiamine, and benfotiamine). Dr. Lonsdale believed that the best absorbed form is TTFD, which, even at lower doses, does desirably penetrate the all-important blood-brain barrier.

I cannot thank you enough for this incredibly insightful, well-written, information-packed answer that has provided me with a path I didn’t even know I should explore. I had not heard of thiamine as a possible therapy for Parkinson’s, among other diseases. Now that I have Googled it, I am very intrigued and will definitely ask my mother’s movement disorder Dr (as well as her internist) about it. It seems to be relatively benign but I always like to double-check regarding possible interactions with other meds or unwanted side effects.

I wish you the best of luck with your health challenges. Wishing you better health each day!

Thank you again!