In this episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Adina Wise discuss the complexities of Parkinson’s disease, including its causes, symptoms, and the role of environmental factors, such as air pollution. They discuss who Parkinson’s primarily affects, the genetic factors at play, the higher incidents in specific regions, and the increase in the frequency of Parkinson’s cases. They also talk about the recent advancements including continuous infusion therapy and stress that early detection is crucial, though challenging due to ethical considerations.

Key Takeaways:

• Movement disorders are one of the few areas of medicine where diagnosis continues to rely heavily on careful observation.

• Parkinson’s is a heterogeneous disorder, not a single disease. Every case is a little different with the well-known motor symptoms - such as tremors, stiffness, and slowness, but also equally important non-motor symptoms - like sleep disturbances, mood changes, cognitive impairment, and more.

• Parkinson’s mostly appears in people over the age of 60. For early-onset Parkinson’s (before the age of 50) accounts for about 4-10% of all cases. In these early-onset cases, there tends to be a stronger genetic influence.

• The number one thing you can do to keep your brain healthy right now is regular aerobic exercise.

"Environmental factors, genes, lifestyle - these all may influence whether Parkinson’s manifests. This makes the Parkinson’s genetics quite complicated." — Dr. Adina Wise

Connect with Dr. Adina Wise:

Professional Bio: https://profiles.mountsinai.org/adina-wise

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adinawise

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/awise.md/

Connect with Therese:

Website: www.criticallyspeaking.net

Threads: @critically_speaking

Email: theresemarkow@criticallyspeaking.net

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

Most of us take for granted that the seafood we eat is healthy and better for the atmosphere. But there are hidden costs in our increasing consumption of seafood that we don’t see. Why? Because these costs are accrued on the high seas and under the sea where few journalists endeavor to cover them. Sea slavery, overfishing, pollution, and loss of revenue for people already struggling to make a living are extensive, but not well known. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter Ian Urbina has seen these horrors firsthand and talks with us today about his book “The Outlaw Ocean” and his foundation of the same name.

Key Takeaways:

• Approximately 50 of our seafood is farmed, and the other 50 percent arrives to consumers via practices involving human abuse and serious environmental damage.

• Much of the farmed fish eat fish-meal that is derived from massive overfishing of fish less desirable for eating (but nonetheless ecologically important) and other species, such as whales, sharks, and turtles) caught up in the fishing process. Cooked, ground up, and used to feed the farmed fish.

• We tend to think about greenhouse gases as being the driver of global change, but these practices are wreaking severe havoc on the planet, underwater.

• Human abuse and slavery are often involved in the fleets that harvest from the sea. Invisible people, disposable people.

• Because all of the above take place out of sight, the damage usually goes unseen due to a lack of journalistic coverage. It’s expensive to document but it's critical that it’s brought to light.

"There is a dark irony to aquaculture and raising fish on land and in pens. It was meant, and supported for many years by environmentalists, as a way to slow the rate of depletion of the wild fish. Now, because those aquaculture fish are being fed pelletized wild-caught fish, it's actually speeding up the rate of ocean depletion." — Ian Urbina

Connect with Ian Urbina:

Twitter: twitter.com/ian_urbina

Facebook: facebook.com/IanUrbinaReporter

Website: theoutlawocean.com

Book: theoutlawocean.com/book

YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCykiIhv2wP4-BftEiKb241Q

Instagram: instagram.com/ian_urbina

Connect with Therese:

Website: www.criticallyspeaking.net

Twitter: @CritiSpeak

Email: theresemarkow@criticallyspeaking.net

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

Breast cancer is on the rise, especially in women under 40. This is pretty scary and the increase points to something environmental. In today’s episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Kris McGrath talk about one of these environmental factors and how our individual underarm hygiene may play a role in our risk for breast (and prostate) cancers earlier in life. Dr. McGrath has had a long-time interest in this trend and they discuss some of his work on the relationship between underarm shaving and the use of deodorants and antiperspirants.

Key Takeaways:

• The majority of breast cancer is environmental or lifestyle-related. Only 5-10% of breast cancer is due to genetic causes. So what are the factors?

• Both breast cancer and prostate cancer are hormone-driven cancers.

• More research needs to be done, but there already is a significant and scary relationship between underarm hygiene and breast and prostate cancers.

"In my paper, I showed that the earlier you began underarm habits, shaving your underarms and applying antiperspirant deodorant three times a week or more, the diagnosis of breast cancer began at a younger age, especially if you started using these products before the age of 16." — Dr. Kris McGrath

Connect with Dr. Kris McGrath:

Professional Bio: feinberg.northwestern.edu/faculty-profiles/az/profile.html?xid=15819

Connect with Therese:

Website: www.criticallyspeaking.net

Twitter: @CritiSpeak

Email: theresemarkow@criticallyspeaking.net

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.