When it comes to our personal experience of the world around us, perception is everything. How we perceive our environment is largely influenced by the information our brains receive from our senses, which help us to determined how to behave and what to feel in a given situation. Every day, we rely on the five most recognizable senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. However, our brains … [Read more...]
Additional spotlight has been cast on dystonia lately, thanks to one of this season’s MasterChef competitors speaking up about having the disorder. A Season 5 contestant of FOX’s cooking reality show, Jaimee Vitolo, who has successfully avoided elimination in the show thus far, explains her “voice issue and awkward movements” to viewers as symptoms of the movement disorder. On August 11, Vitoli … [Read more...]
This Saturday, The Parkinson Alliance will be hosting its annual fundraiser Unity Walk in Central Park, in New York City. One hundred percent of donations from this 1.4-mile walk go toward research on Parkinson’s disease (PD). The Princeton-based Parkinson Alliance is the umbrella organization responsible for Unity Walk, the largest single-day fundraising and awareness event for the disease. The … [Read more...]
Toward the end of 2013, I was looking for more tools to not only help me serve clients as a health coach, but to also become a part of my own healing regimen. I had studied and become certified as a holistic health coach, specializing in nutrition at IIN. I had studied as a women’s fitness specialist with NASM. I had even taking the first steps toward getting certified to teach various mind-body … [Read more...]
It turns out that today’s post is going to be a more personal one. Yesterday, the uncontrollable muscle movements returned after a pretty significant absence. Yes, it certainly is a pain in the neck (and face and legs). Yet I haven’t been as disheartened as frustrated. So many plans have been canned due to the greedy movement monster: Dystonia. Last night I couldn’t go to the book club I was … [Read more...]
On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its latest Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) watch list, which comes out every quarter and identifies potential signs of serious risks or new safety information on drugs. Sixteen drugs turned up in the AERS database during the last three months of 2011, including milnacipran, or Savella, which is a drug used for managing … [Read more...]
by Renée Canada There are the mothers who ignore the claims that you are fine, despite the out-of-nowhere, repeated falls you’ve just taken and seizure-like jerks in your body, and insist on taking to you to the ER. There are the mothers who are by your side, night and day, during the scariest week of your life in the hospital when your body has decided quite violently that you are no longer its … [Read more...]