I was shocked to find out that my high-school friend Roger Long had Young-Onset Parkinson’s. We’re not THAT old!
But I was super-happy to discover that his Parkinson’s is in remission because of his thinking outside the box.
Not only that, but Roger climbed to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro a few months ago without being on any medication!
Roger and I both looked at neurological disorders (his Parkinson’s and my sons’ Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)) as related to autism because of the neurological damage associated with all of them.
Once I began researching the causes of my sons’ SPD, I came across all sorts of information about neurological disorders.
Autism, PDD-NOS, SPD and ADHD as well as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and OCD are the classic children’s neurological disorders.
Then there are the adult neuro disorders: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, multiple sclerosis and Lyme.
Did you ever stop to think that there might be a connection among all of these disorders? I did, and so did Roger.
We both thought that if kids can be recovered from autism with diet and if these orders are related in that they are all neurological disorders, wouldn’t it be possible to recover from Parkinson’s and SPD?
So that’s what Roger did.
That is, after he spent 8 years on pharmaceuticals that left him bloated and addicted to food because of their ability to antagonize dopamine.
He did what most people with Parkinson’s do when they discover they literally cannot get out of bed in the morning: he went to his doctor, who promptly put him on medication.
True, the pills allowed him to move, but they also came with dangerous side effects: diabetes, heavy weight gain and sleep apnea. He was very close to dying from the side effects alone.
Roger put up with the side effects because he, like most people, believed that medication was the only way, even if it wasn’t the best way.
Then Roger discovered his trigger for getting better. He says everybody needs to find their own. His was when his older son got shipped off to Afghanistan.
In any case, Roger is now in remission because of balancing physical, nutritional and mental needs.
And he’s doing so well that he just hiked up Mt. Kilimanjaro! You can read his personal blog here and his Kilimanjaro blog here. You can also find him on Twitter.
