Ah yes, the end of the 20th century and here I was in my chosen spot, Berkeley, California, ready to enjoy my third life. My first two lives were dominated - or more accurately "defined" - by duodenal ulceration at the grand age of 16 with three hemorrhaging events in 1964, 1969 and 1972, followed by lumbar spine surgeries in 1968, 1975, 1989 and 1991.

There were other "medical nasties", as listed below, but my duodenum and lumbar back were the real problems.

Yes, I felt enormously confident my THIRD LIFE was going to be - as a Reader in organic chemistry, who hailed from the north of England, was wont to say - a permanent round of beer and skittles.

The 21st Century started out well enough for me. But oh boy by March of 2001 things were already fast going downhill.

Following a regular and routine eye examination I was told that my lens were developing opacity and at some future time I'd most certainly need bilateral cataractectomy.

This has become a very common and straightforward procedure in the hands of the right person so having already had too much surgery and/or medical intervention for "someone so young" e.g..

Date of birth: June 27, 1930

Tonsillectomy 1934
Chicken Pox 1945
Duodenal ulcer symptoms in 1946, finally diagnosed by X-ray in 1952.
Appendectomy 1949
Scarlet fever 1950
Caldwell Luck maxillary sinus surgery 1972
A TURP for benign prostate hypertrophy in 1982, and Lumbar Spine Surgeries in 1968, 1975, 1989 and 1991.

I elected to go ahead while still having a possible margin of youth with me. Thus at the age of 70, I was given valium and quite literally watched as the lens was scraped (or removed) from and then replaced in my left eye by a prosthetic lens. Even that however failed "the beer and skittle test".

Afterwards I developed conjunctivitis, bletharitis, uveitis and every other conceivable left "eyeitis" that one could conjure up. More than a dozen ophthalmologic post-docs at the Procter Eye Institute of U.C. San Francisco examined me. I had been sent to get a second opinion but being a lucky duck I got >12 at a bargain rate.

It's always said to be a giggle when a dentist keeps one's mouth open for a protracted period. For a real laugh and a half extrapolate that to a multitude of ardent ophthalmologists with very, very bright lights.

Before I leave this account of the "gauche" eye, there was more. I needed an additional procedure - this time a capsulotomy - to put things just right. Dash it all I wanted at least a part of me to be just right. So then I had the right eye done on September 10, 2001.

Now things really became big time. On the morning of September 11, 2001 the dressings were removed. The first thing I saw was that the pinky of my right hand was shaking.

The ophthalmologist, a long time friend from 1972, looked at me, bent my arms a few times and suggested I consult a neurologist. It transpired that I had Parkinson's disease and this was conclusively confirmed in July, 2003.

Only then did I look back at my medical past and, as is the case with most people with PD, I came to realize this cursed affliction had been with me possibly as long ago as 1975.

That was the year in which my sense of smell had gone; in medical parlance I had anosmia. I could distinguish a red from a white wine by its color but that was it. All these esoteric comments about such and such a wine having delicate nuances of raspberry, strawberry, nuts and so forth were totally beyond my ability to detect. I was limited to declare whether the liquid was wet or not.

Then I remembered the time I'd given my last dog and pony show. At the August 1999 Waterjet Technology Association (WJTA) Conference in hot, horrible, humid Houston I had - at least this was my opinion -"successfully" given a 30-minute spiel. A visiting Chinese guest had - yet once again - not been able to obtain a USA visa and therefore the President of the WJTA asked if I could say a few more words about my favorite elixir. “Absolutely”, quoth I - being a King's Scout and therefore being permanently and perpetually prepared - and launched into what was intended to be another 30-minute tour de force.

I vividly remember I got as far as telling the 'thoroughly enthralled' audience about the double Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and his prescient prediction on the approach to covalency of the hydrogen bond when under ultrahigh pressure when I lost my voice. Not by any means a transitory loss but a 100% "full blown out the bloody window failure".

Now I'll fast forward and list my full spectrum of symptoms as they were at my lowest point in 2004 and 2005.

- Tremor (shaking)
- Slowness of movement
- Rigidity (stiffness)
- Difficulty with balance

Other PD symptoms that I had included:

- Small, cramped handwriting - totally illegible in my case.
- Stiff facial expression
- Shuffling walk
- Muffled speech
- Drooling and a lot of phlegm
- Urine incontinence
- Depression
- Abysmally poor eating abilities especially for an Englishman

Also I 'enjoyed' seborrheic dermatitis*, longitudinally cracked finger nails*, permanent constipation* (requiring virtually daily use of suppositories), dry eyes*, insomnia* and from time to time I had very sharp and involuntary deep intakes of breath* - especially at night.

I have posted all of the vicissitudes associated with my PD on two National Parkinson's Foundation websites, namely AsktheDietitian (157 postings) and AsktheDoctor (100 postings). The present account is a synopsis of those 250 odd postings but inevitably not all details can be included. Interested readers could conduct a search of the archives and read the whole ball of wax.

There is an item with which my name has become associated: curry or its active component curcumin. I even penned a hymn on curcumin. To those with a religious musical bent the doggerel below may be sung to that well known hymn:

Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
Lift up your gates and sing,
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna to your King!

Last night as I lay snoozing
A thought came to my head
Oh me I was excited
I jumped up from bed.

Suppose I thought unto myself
That what you just now said

Is true my boy your fame
Would immediately be widespread.

Is true my boy your fame
Would immediately be widespread.
----------------------------------------------
So now I must explain to you
What this is all about
No need to whisper quietly
No Glenn go shout it out.

I do believe in chemistry
That's fairly plain to see
That curcumin's a great chelator
From its structure it has to be

That curcumin's a great chelator
From its structure it has to be.
----------------------------------------------
Those phenol groups and other parts
But especially when paired
Makes curcumin the best there ever was
With room enough to spare,
Combin'ed with the stem cells that are as yet to come

And with the melatonin too
It's bound to be much fun.

And with the melatonin too
It's bound to be much fun.
----------------------------------------------
I now take 2 x 900 mg/day curcumin with 5mg Bioperine (black pepper)and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.

However overall it meant that while still debilitated by my history of back pain and continuing medications, I received the additional burden of PD and its medications.

Several of my medications for back pain, including valium to which, after 30 + years it was decided I'd become addicted, as well as Vicoden, turned out to be doing me far more harm than good. I lifted the shroud on all this by changing this situation just recently (2005-2006).

Not wishing to depend upon PD drugs either, I pursued alternatives.. With considerable help and advice from my private massage therapist, I realized that all of my abdominal pain was not the result of epididymitis, diverticulis or (as evidenced by a frontal up-periscopic procedure) a savagely blooded prostate but of bloating and the permanent presence of H. Pylori.

Armed with this information I modified my diet even further. I now use rice milk in lieu of dairy products, eat no red meat and, as noted, take curcumin twice daily.

These changes in medication and the addition of curcumin have provided me a new lease on life over the past year.

However from my extensive reading on PD when I was first told of it, I realized long ago that to get "the monkey off my back" I clearly needed something more.

That something appeared to me quite obviously to be new brain cells. Nothing short of this would give me my life back. As it now stands I've lost 6 years of my 'golden' (or beer and skittle) retirement years to PD.

Gradually, after contacting several agencies around the world and obtaining feedback through the PWP grapevine, I looked into non-surgically introduced stem cells.

Ultimately, I located Frank Morales M.D., 956-592-5585, who with his intravenous implant procedure using umbilical blood cord stem cells IV protocol fitted my needs perfectly.

No barbaric surgery, no inflated price tag, no trans-oceanic/overseas expedition.
Hence, my Thanksgiving Eve present to myself

The following is taken from a letter that I had previously written to a fellow PD sufferer - known in the inner circle as a PWP (= person with Parkinson's).

" Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness in including me in your
discussions. However, I've in essence dropped out of the P.D. scene.

I've done as well as can be expected and am now turning my attention to other things.

My thinking is that the only "cure" will come from stem cell work where there will still be no true understanding of the underlying cause of P.D. but where mere duplication of human biochemistry will be sufficient. "

As one can see from the first paragraph I have essentially resigned myself to the fact that I have Parkinson's Disease. My situation is such that it's a great inconvenience but is none-the-less something I can "live with". I had hoped to go out in a blaze of glory but that's not apparently going to occur.

I don't see any future in any of the research that is being conducted - not in MY future at any rate. It's all too fragmented, rife with personal interests, far too concerned with solely allopathic procedures while the medical insurance scheme in the United States is from my personal experience a total and unmitigated disaster.

You will note above my use of the word cure. This is a term which seemingly creates a great deal of ire to some. To one such soul I wrote the following:

"I fully realize the significance of the word cure. However because there is no actual test for PD other than that "bestowed" by an MDS, I know far better than anyone else whether or not I feel better or am cured.

I can also tell you that just as extensive and successful lumbar spine surgery was defined as a cure I still have a need for massage therapy to keep me going.

I believe it is totally unreasonable to come out of 30+ years of PD without any symptoms at all. I would certainly expect, especially knowing what I've been through, that some permanent brain damage has occurred.

So yes I consider myself 'cured'. "

There are currently three other people - in the part of the world where English is the dominant language - who have been cured of PD by umbilical blood cord stem cell implants. Two of these were patients of Dr Trossel, Rotterdam, Holland while the third person was subjected to a cranial implant in China. For full details please see stemcellschina.com or my posting on AsktheDietitian.

As an aside, I consider any surgery on the brain such as DBS or double blind sham surgery totally barbaric. My thoughts on this have been published.

It seems that every time I hear mention of PD there in inevitably in the background a stage whisper of "DBS".

Why is this?

Even by their own admission the practitioners of this technique admit they don't understand the mechanism. Without the benefit of anesthesia, holes are drilled in people's skulls under so called stereotactic guidance and then electric currents are applied to the implanted electrodes while these puppies are in the human brain.

The accuracy of the stimulation is also suspect in that the units frequently have to be reprogrammed etc.

One of the NPF medical staff previously agreed that it was a poorly understood technique.

In my opinion it is barbaric. It has even got to a point where only half of a brain is being subjected to DBS so as to satisfy FDA requirements. A millimeter, give or take, is the accuracy of DBS, whereas on a molecular level one can drive a flaming molecular truck through a 1 millimeter space. One is considering nano scale techniques that demand nanosurgery. The precision of placement in DBS is dubious since the leads often "migrate". Molecular dimensions are measured in Angstroms and 1 millimeter is seven orders of magnitude larger than an Angstrom.

Cynically, consideration of this technique is that insurance has approved it and so suppliers and their surgeons make Big Bucks.

I believe it's totally inappropriate for this practice to be continued.

I've previously mentioned that I have cut back or totally discontinued prescribed medications. I shall now give the details.

It's convenient to divide this description into two parts, i.e.

1. Those steps that I took before receiving the stem cell implant and

2. Those readily attainable steps taking place after receiving the implant.

1. PREIMPLANT

There were some important decisions that I had to make for the preimplant discontinuations and because they overlapped other PD-related events I shall describe them chronologically and include pertinent comments.

Firstly I received vivid confirmation of my actually having PD in March, 2004. My eldest Son and Daughter went to watch the Daytona 500 race but I didn't attend because of my ever-present 'shyness of sunlight' (a.k.a. cursed Celtic countenance). This is exacerbated in my case because since 1994 I had been on a regular daily dose of tetracycline for control of rosacea.

Exposure to sunlight is contraindicated in subjects taking tetracycline and, to add to this, I had already undergone 2 sessions of facial surgery, as well as 1 on my right shoulder for melanoma, so I was not that interested. Furthermore, there is a direct link between melanoma and PD - a fact that many dermatologists are not aware of.

On the evening after the Daytona 500, I found myself surrounded by densely packed people. I discovered my feet just wouldn't move. It was absolutely as though they had been cemented in place.

I'd read about this phenomenon in PWP and so - more especially because now I'm cured - when people quite openly ask if I'm sure I had PD, I can cite this instance (and many others) which clearly confirm that "Yes indeed, I had it".

The next time I visited Florida was in October 2005.

However by the time I arrived back in California, I was exhausted, caught bronchitis which in combination with PD proved to be very close to fatal. I still remember one particular night. Everything was a pale shade of grey and as my caregiver put me to bed I recall thinking that I wouldn't have minded if I slept forever. In any event during this period of bronchitis I experienced hallucinations and various and sundry other peculiar symptoms.

During a subsequent medical examination it was discovered that I had been addicted to valium since 1976. I was placed under the care of a psychiatrist and with his counsel and a huge amount of personal effort I was able within 2 months to sleep at nights without anything stronger than chamomile tea.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the suffering I have experienced with PD would have been far less in severity and in the wide range of symptoms had I not been addicted to valium. Every surgical procedure I have had since 1976 has involved valium.

While discussing extraneous chemicals this is an appropriate juncture at which to discuss some of the reasons that I believe may well be responsible for my having PD.

1. Firstly as a research chemist I synthesized and worked with compounds never previously isolated much less characterized by toxicology.

I vividly recall that as an undergraduate in 1950 one of the laboratory experiments involved the Benzidine rearrangement. Benzidine is now regarded as one of the worst carcinogenic materials and while in no way am I drawing a parallel between PD and carcinogenicity it does reveal the almost cavalier attitude that was so prevalent until only recently.

2. At a later stage in my career as a chemist, I worked in the Oil Refinery and Petrochemical Manufacturing Industries for 5 years. During this time I was exposed to a whole host of chemicals and then for 1 year I worked on the isolation, separation and identification of the components of gasolines and on their exhaust combustion products. Toluene was the principal component of gasoline in general and benzpyrene was identified in the exhausts. Neither toluene nor benzpyrene are suggested components for dessert.

3. Furthermore in recent years much more attention has been given to the effects of concentrations of radioactive materials which are below those of the EPA standards for carcinogenicity. These low levels are thought by some workers to be sufficient to cause PD. For 4 years I was exposed to such low levels: 1 year in the UK atomic energy industry and for 3 years in a university hall of residence. To add to this witches brew I also on 3 separate occasions worked with formaldehyde - another well known carcinogen.

4. I just used the term witches brew - a term not inappropriate to use in describing the mixtures of solvent used in elution chromatography. Thus for 6 years I used hundreds of gallons of diethyl ether, Skellysolve, benzene, chloroform, and other organic solvents. I used so much diethyl ether that quite literally my entire body used to exude the stuff. Diethyl ether was at one time used during surgical procedures and about three years ago a PWP started to collect a list of patients that had been exposed to it.

Most regrettably, as far as I am concerned, this project received no follow up.

I had previously attempted to have the American Chemical Society (ACS) conduct a surview among its more than 150,000 members on the prevalence of PD among chemists, feeling that this would provide critically important information: ACS thought otherwise.

5. In any event I feel that exposure to diethyl ether and its historical use as a anesthetic would have led - with some gentle persuasion - into what I believe is a subject deserving more attention namely the effect of anesthesia upon PD. Taking myself as an example I've received general anesthetic (please see above) a total of 8 occasions (excluding dental and oral surgery) for various periods of time up to a maximum of 10+hours

One would think that such treatment does the brain no good.

Finally on a presumably non-chemical point of view , I am convinced that a person's "ability" to experience inflammation will eventually be found to be strongly correlatable to the incidence of PD.

2. POST-IMPLANT

Clearly there was a necessity to come down slowly from the Sinemet, especially because my stem cells are being converted in such a way as to produce the active ingredient namely dopamine.

After I was successful in weaning myself of valium, discontinuation of the rest of my medication was relatively easy. There were however clearly problems because no one had ever done this before, i.e. no precedent. I was - as it were - alone on the island. Being the only one on the island*, I had no one to guide me on any of this "stuff".

[*Since preparing this write-up I have been kindly made aware of one of Dr. Trosell's patients who has taken 2 years to accomplish this objective.]

Some considerable while ago I discovered to my horror that I was running out of Sinemet. To cut a long story short I found myself waiting in line at the pharmacy and feeling most decidedly PD-ish was able to get a half tablet with 10 minutes to spare.

Apparently nothing is known about the effect of dopamine upon people without PD.

I didn't consider half lives of medications because most of these measurements are conducted on compounds in splendid isolation from others while my body contents with all its medications is much akin to a primordial soup.

Instead I followed this regimen:

Monday December 18, 2006.

7.35 a.m. ½ Sinemet
11.40 am ½ Sinemet t = 4 hours 5 minutes
4.50 p.m. ½ Sinemet t = 5 hours 10 minutes
8.20 p.m. ½ Sinemet t = 3 hours 30 minutes

Tuesday, December 19, 2006.

7.00 a.m. 1/2 Sinemet
11.15 am 1/2 Sinemet
5.05 p.m. 1/4 Sinemet

No more Sinemet.

On December 20, 2006, I cut back on amantadine and for the next 7 days reduced my daily dose to 1 x 100 mg/day from 2/day.

From December 27, 2006, I did the same with selegiline using half-sized pills.

Next it was Aricept that bit the dust but by this time I had become so hubristic, so very self-confident, I just stopped it over a few days.

It's really a shame that I don't have the capability of doing any real-time typing. It would be much easier if I had this because I keep experiencing different nuances which would be very interesting for anybody studying this disease and more especially for those studying patients who are recovering from it.

Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that these stem cells are taking their sweet time in bringing about a total recovery for me, but they are nonetheless doing so.

My seborrheic dermatitis is gone but on odd occasions I still have ropy saliva.

The interesting thing about the nights is that in contrast to when I had problems with my back I used to get pain in parts of my body during the night and now just lying still I don't feel any pain at all. It's all rather marvelous. Viva massage therapy.

I'll now restate my PD symptoms, to save readers scrolling to the beginning of this tome, and discuss my progress:

- Tremor (shaking)
- Slowness of movement
- Rigidity (stiffness)
- Difficulty with balance

Other PD symptoms that I had included:

- Small, cramped handwriting - totally illegible in my case..
- Stiff facial expression
- Shuffling walk
- Muffled speech
- Drooling and a lot of phlegm
- Urine incontinence
- Depression
- Abysmally poor eating abilities especially for an Englishman

Also I 'enjoyed' seborrheic dermatitis*, longitudinally cracked finger nails*, permanent constipation* (requiring virtually daily use of suppositories), dry eyes*, insomnia* and from time to time very sharp and involuntary deep intakes of breath* - especially at night..

I no longer suffer depression which as far as I was concerned was the worst symptom.

My slowness and imbalance are unchanged while tremors and rigidity were never too much of a problem.

All those items marked with an asterisk are gone.

The two items which I now have to contend with most seriously are urinary incontinence and my appalling eating 'habits'.

I am now forced once again to depend on Depends - the major problem of which arises from not bring able to bend my back an included necessity for any apparel of the lower extremity.

My eating is a constant source of embarrassment. I have gone from the only person in the dining room of the Queen Mary, when I came in 1956, who knew what the palatial array of tableware was for but also how and when to use it, to someone who chooses his meal based on the manual dexterity required. Thus sushi, eaten by hand by male Japanese, is vastly preferable to spaghetti and meat balls with chop sticks.

Glenn

Tom R. Anderson – Titanium Man meets Stem Cell Therapy

Current Update

Medications included:

• Stalevo 600 mg/day
• Amantadine 200 mg/day
• Mirapex 1½ mg/day
• Doxazosin mesylate 4 mg/day
• Temazepam 30 mg/day
• Hydrocodone 7½/750 mg as needed