This is the regular monthly installment of the KosAbility group open thread. Those not interested in the details of this diary can feel free to skip to the comments.
The Movement Disorder Society is the governing body that sets the criteria for diagnosing Parkinson's. The fulltext of these criteria are behind a paywall which strikes me as a travesty. Be that as it may, here is the bit relevant to this discussion:
movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/...
MDS clinical diagnostic criteria for Parkinson's disease
Diagnosis of Clinically Established PD requires: ...
3. No red flags...
Red flags...
2. A complete absence of progression of motor symptoms or signs over 5 or more y[ears] unless stability is related to treatment
If red flags exist the diagnosis may be termed "clinically probable PD", but not “established PD”. What constitutes "treatment" as referred to in red flag #2 is not detailed, but presumably excludes interventions that are not recognized medical treatments. So if a Parkinson's patient enjoys a lack of progression due to thiamine or cinnamon they will be regarded as not having clinically established Parkinson's, and the possibility that these treatments might actually have an effect may be safely ignored. In a real life example, a person who experienced improvement as a result of using cinnamon privately communicated to me that his doctor then said he must not have Parkinson's.
Meanwhile, Parkinson's patients who learned to dance the Tango in this study achieved results that would be worldwide headlines were they attributed to a drug (although there are other Tango dancing studies that did not achieve such outstanding results):
For the MDS-UPDRS-3, there was no significant change in the Control group from baseline to 12 months, whereas the Tango group had a reduction of 28.7% [in Parkinson;s motor symptoms] (12.8 points).
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