The article says that he's now able to walk 6km without problems but doesn't seem to say what happens after that. Walking 6km is just his typical Sunday routine, so I assume he could walk further if he wanted to, but it's never made clear if that's true or if the batteries of his device typically die after a certain distance, or if the implant somehow becomes less effective after a large number of steps, or what.
It's a strange emphases on a very specific number. I wouldn't say "I repaired my car's engine and it can now drive 20 miles" if what I meant was "I repaired my car's engine and it drives normally now"
>The article says that he's now able to walk 6km without problems but doesn't seem to say what happens after that.
The device explodes.
Seriously, "Can walk 6km" is an excellent way to concisely yet still quantitatively describe what the man can now do. (Imagine the response if it had instead merely said "He can go for long walks": "But how long is 'long'??!?")
I imagine the journalist at some point said: "Just how far do you now walk", and he replied "Oh, I often go for a 6km walk on Sunday." It's a newspaper article, not a technical spec.
My father has stage 4 Parkinson's (same age as the patient from the article, diagnosed in 2015) and the odds of him being able to walk more than 50 meters without locking up are pretty hit-or-miss, so to me this distance sounds mind blowing
It speaks to what the implant has achieved. Going from barely walking in his own words to walking 6KM is a solid and easily relatable improvement (it is a news article).
You might say that your car could now drive 20 miles if before it was known that it barely made it to the end of the road.
Good point, and I do think it was important context to have in the article. I think having the specific number of kilometers in the headline was what really threw me off.
To Europeans a 6km walk isn't much at all they'd walk 1km or 2km to a store but in the USA or Canada anything over 250m is a drive. So I'd say to people in the US and Canada 6km seems like a hike but to others it's just a very short walk.
That's a bit uncharitable towards Americans. Yes, it's a very car-centric society in most places, but they also have a very strong outdoor/hiking/camping culture.
It's not uncharitable. Yes, some Americans really are serious hikers, but the idea that this is common among Americans is fantasy. Most Americans don't hike at all and couldn't hike a mile in mountainous terrain because they're too fat or otherwise out-of-shape. Meanwhile, some others are mega-hikers who can hike rim-to-rim and back in the Grand Canyon in a day. It's the same way with American cyclists: most can't ride a bike much at all, while the ones who can are frequently close to pro-level. America is a land of extremes, but with an obesity rate of well over 50%, it is not a place where normal, everyday people are serious hikers.
> Most Americans don't hike at all and couldn't hike a mile in mountainous terrain because they're too fat or otherwise out-of-shape.
You obviously know very little about America. First of all, most Americans aren't so fat they can't walk around. Second, I'm really fat (far more than average) and even I can hike a mile in mountainous terrain. Not only can I, I have and will again. It's taxing (which it shouldn't be), but it's quite manageable. Walking a mile isn't that much in the grand scheme of things.
So yeah, not only is it uncharitable, your attempt to defend it shows your own ignorance both of Americans and of what level of activity is possible even for those who are overweight. Bad show, sir.
Ignorance of Americans? I am American! I know my home country all too well. The stats don't lie: more than half of Americans aren't just overweight, they're obese. "Can't walk a mile" isn't meant to be taken literally; of course an obese person can struggle to hike a mile, but I guess I should always count on autistic HN users to take everything literally.
Wait how are people meant to interpret sweeping, quantitative statements on American capacity for exercise in the context of criticizing the reporting of a disabled man now able to walk, unaided, a moderate distance?
Walking 6 km takes about an hour if you are fast. So I don't think that qualifies as a very short walk. Also most europeans would rather drive that distance as well.
For another point of context, to my father, an Australian born in 1935, 6 km | 3.7 miles is the distance he walks every morning after he gets up at 4 am or so.
Sounds a bit fancy for an Aussie farmboy, former shearer .. I looked it up and he more or less moves at that pace anyway - maybe due to being in the navy and having had to march (for a short stint, then five years in engine rooms) - but most likely because we've always walked a lot to get places and why waste the time going slow.
He's still pretty active, he maintains sections of the Bibbulmun Track (1,000 km walking track here in the lower corner of the state) shovels the odd few tonnes of manure, splits wood by hand, etc.
Having grown up in a depressingly car-dependant suburb in the US, I moved to a walkable city specifically so that I could enjoy that aspect of my life. I reguarly walk more than 7 miles (11.3 km) per day. Although rare, there are walkable places in the US, and people who enjoy walking.
If you're going for these walks every day, that honestly seems like an enormous waste of time.
Go for a run, then get back to something productive or novel or mind-expanding.
You're a once-in-a-universe spark. All of the things since the big bang led to you now, and you will never be again. This is it. The universe exists for you now, and you have this one singular play through.
One thing I've realised is that time spent walking is never wasted.
During a walk you can think more clearly, or you can listen to a (mind-expanding) podcast, or you can walk with friends or your partner which counts towards building & strengthening relationships. That's without even considering the health benefits.
If you drive somewhere you could walk, that time really is wasted - because you should be focusing on not killing anyone instead of on anything interesting.
Same walk over and over? Could be a nice walk! I repeat the same walks, because I live near a park and a beach. I could roam the streets randomly instead, but that wouldn't be better.
Running is better for cardio, sure, but I tended to find that changing clothes, warming up, running 5K, recovering and taking a shower takes close to an hour - and I could have walked that 5K in the same time and not been exhausted for the rest of the morning. Longer distances are more worth it but regular 10-20K runs turned out to be bad for my knees.
Walks occupy enough of my mind to let it only have one or two conversations going on inside it at a time. It also stops me from doing lots of other things, and removes the feeling of "oh but you should also..." because I can't, I'm not at the computer. Those combined means that while getting some gentle exercise I can properly think through some things.
ah, fixing the brain problem at the legs instead of the brain....
The Japanese had earlier examples but I think it was just a typical spinal stim unit they appropriated from the chronic pain folks. This one seemed to map the myotomes a little more in detail from my brief overview, so it's probably acting as a complex leg muscle actuator w/ a central controller chip vs. just blasting the spine w/ juice
To be fair, regrowing neurons tends to be a good bit more difficult than throwing a DSP on some electrodes. Oversimplified explanation, obviously, but it helps illustrate the point.
Is the dementia caused by the disease, or a correlated effect due to the loss of mobility and the ability to exercise, or swallow regular food, or similar?
I've read that exercise, hard exercise, can mitigate or recover some of the effects of parkinsons.
The dementia is probably caused by the underlying mechanism.
The motor symptoms of Parkinson’s are caused by the loss of dopamine producing neurons in the motor cortex. The loss of those neurons for any reason would cause Parkinson style motor symptoms.
The cause of the loss of dopamine producing neurons in standard Parkinson’s is not understood, but appears to be related to a thing called Lewy bodies which are deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein. The presence of Lewy bodies outside of the motor cortex is correlated with a disease called Lewy body dementia rather than Parkinson’s.
Most likely, there is a underlying process that causes neuron loss that slowly spreads. This process frequently starts in the motor cortex resulting in Parkinson’s, but sometimes starts elsewhere causing Lewy body dementia. Dementia in a person with Parkinson’s likely occurs when the process starts spreading beyond the motor cortex which effectively causes Lewy body dementia now that it is no longer isolated to the motor cortex.
My father passed from Lewy Body dementia. His brother died of Parkinson's. The diseases appear different in the order of symptoms, but are similar in the end.
Doing some research on the terminology, I guess motor system is the term I was looking for. I am not a biologist so I am not familiar with the terminology.
It certainly had a significant impact on a Parkinson's patient I knew (from regular expressions of and involvement with delusional hallucinations to relatively normal, organized behavior).
Of course the loss of cells might be self reinforcing.
Had massive health problems dozens of doctors. Ended up being a combination of things, but changing diet to an autoimmune protocol diet was the number 2 thing that made a difference.
Blood thinners. Turned out I was genetically prone to clotting, which went bonkers after gas exposure. No amount Healthy lifestyle was going to help, needed something to stop clotting
There’s a fairly strong correlation between severity of Parkinson’s and vitamin D levels. It’s a nasty self-feeding decline as people tend to move less and spend less time outside as the disease progresses, which may potentially make the progression worse.
"Still: A Michael J Fox Movie" was recently released on Apple TV+, and it was eye-opening. Worthwhile, recommended -- even if (like me) you're not already a particular fan.
I tried to get something from that link but the abstract is too broad. Can you quote anything from the paper that could help someone understand without reading the whole thing?
I think the "time bomb" is in this sentence: "... some viral infections have been linked to an increased risk for the development of PD ..." with the context that we've all just been through a global pandemic.
It's apparently possible to accomplish this without surgery, through neuroplasticity [0]. But why do that when there's a super cool, complex, expensive, technological solution?
This is Hackernews. We don't like or trust technology here. Especially when naturopathy and ayurvedic medicine have given us remedies that are literally thousands of years old!
It talks about dopamine, which is literally the placebo effect. It's typical of HN users to post and upvote news stories of weak studies like this one.
dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in practically all major brain functions, it's not just the placebo effect. and dopamine therapy is an important part of treating some Parkinsons symptoms. i'm not speaking in favor of the study, just noting that this is not a correct description of what dopamine is or does.
Yes, of course. It was just a quick comment pointing out that dopamine is highly influenced by the placebo effect, and parkinsons studies show that the placebo effect has a large effect on rcts for the condition.
There’s a lot more to it than the link I posted. It’s been very well documented. He was diagnosed by several doctors. And it’s not a single anecdote. His technique has been replicated by other people.
It's a strange emphases on a very specific number. I wouldn't say "I repaired my car's engine and it can now drive 20 miles" if what I meant was "I repaired my car's engine and it drives normally now"