Stanford PD Community Blog

Meet Denise and Bernard Coley, Leaders in the Black Parkinson’s Community.

You’ve seen us put a spotlight on APDA-funded researchers as well as interesting and inspiring people living with PD, and today we are excited to introduce you to Denise and Bernard Coley – two special people who are extraordinary advocates for the PD community and have been involved in numerous initiatives to improve Parkinson’s health outcomes in the Black community.

Those who regularly act out their dreams should see a physician and undergo a sleep study to uncover the underlying reason for their behavior, experts say.  … Researchers say that dream enactment can indicate health issues, one of the most common and serious being the future onset of Parkinson’s disease. Wes Mills started acting out his dreams more than 10 years before his first tremor appeared. Other common conditions that can lead to dream enactment are obstructive sleep apnea and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Happy new year from Robin, Steven, and Denise at Stanford Parkinson’s Community Outreach!
Our Stanford office is closed from Thursday, Dec 21, reopening on Thursday, January 4.

Excerpt: “‘No one really knows what causes Parkinson’s disease, other than about 10 to 20 percent is genetic,'” said Ted M. Dawson, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Researchers such as Dawson have been searching for clues, and in the last two decades, a growing body of evidence points to an unexpected origin for Parkinson’s disease: the gut.  What is known as the ‘gut-first’ — as opposed to ‘brain-first’— hypothesis states that Parkinson’s begins as abnormal proteins in the nerves of the gastrointestinal tract. Misfolded proteins, found excessively in the post-mortem brains of patients with Parkinson’s as well as Alzheimer’s, accumulate into large, toxic clumps that disrupt nerve cell function.”