The New Scientist published an article a few weeks ago called How to keep your brain blooming. It’s written by by James Goodwin, someone who knows a lot about brains.
Continue reading “Blooming brain”Tag: Sleep
Sleep quality is one of the areas affected by neuro-degenerative diseases. It is often overlooked but it is a very important symptom. If your sleep quality is adversely affected, then so is every other part of your daily life.
Exercise and sleep in Parkinson’s
Hot off the research press is a journal article with a self-explanatory title: Effects of exercise on sleep in neurodegenerative disease.
It starts by summarising the main things that affect sleep in people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases as being:
- damage to the sleep-wake system in the brain, that affects the circadian rhythm and disrupts normal sleeping and waking patterns; and
- “secondary mechanisms” which include a raft of things like medication side effects, having to get up to the toilet during the night, poor sleep “hygiene”, sleep-related breathing disorders, and the environment in which you try to sleep.
Sleep
Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep is a very good read. He writes beautifully and with well-argued clarity.
Prof Walker gives very compelling evidence that sleep is not an optional human behaviour – that if we want to live well and live long, then ensuring a good night’s sleep (every night and without drugs) will make that more possible.
Continue reading “Sleep”Three days
Al has Parkinson’s and he started using a two-wavelength Duo Coronet in July last year, once daily in the morning.
I had an email from Al the other day, and I have his permission to quote his very interesting comments.
‘If I miss a day session, there is a gradual change in me. Bad dreams come back, my tolerance level goes way down and my lethargy goes way up.’
Continue reading “Three days”It really does work…
I can understand the skepticism about the biological effect of red lights, because that’s where I started from. It seemed too good to be true. However, there is a wealth of excellent quality research out there, and the evidence is compelling that red and near infrared lights protect existing neurones, and can stimulate new neurones to be created, stimulate blood vessels to increase connections- neuroprotection, neurogenesis and angiogenesis.
Continue reading “It really does work…”Parkinson’s summary
I wrote the following for someone interested in the effects of red and near infrared lights in Parkinson’s Disease. It is a summary of PD-related redlightsonthebrain blog posts.
If you select the Parkinson’s tag on the blog, you get the posts that refer in some way to PD. https://redlightsonthebrain.blog/tag/parkinsons-disease/
Research findings blog posts are:
1. A summary of the findings of the people with PD using bucket light hats published in a peer reviewed journal.
2. A summary of a 2016 presentation given by Prof John Mitrofanis, an international leader in research on red lights and PD.
Interesting anecdotal blog posts are:
1. On sleep
2. On the subtlety of the effects of transcranial red and near infrared lights
Red lights on the brain 