The Fourth World Parkinson’s Congress was held in Portland in late September. It was a massive gathering of the most prominent neurologists, movement disorder specialists, researchers, people with Parkinson’s (PWP) and their caregivers. Some 4,500 people from 67 countries attended, including me.

I often find that the amount of information I am exposed to at conferences is so overwhelming that it’s hard to get my brain around all of it.  So I’m concentrating on just three things I learned:

• Living well with Parkinson’s is as much about attitude as ability
• Nutrition really does matter
• Many new treatments are in the pipeline for dyskinesia

There were are least three sessions on living well with PD; I attended two. Like with any life-altering disease, a positive attitude is a key component for living well despite your prognosis. The deal with PD, however, is that depression and anxiety, which can severely hinder quality of life, are symptoms of the disease, not just reactions to the disease. That makes it harder to overcome those feelings.

I was reminded at this conference that it’s important to get “out there.”  I think volunteering  with PRSA and the LWV are helping to make me feel “normal” – like I was before my PD diagnosis – and they are very rewarding, too. I’d like to do more to connect with friends and nurture those relationships, too.

Of course, there are meds that can help, but one speaker’s story about not letting the disease get in his was way of his life was particularly poignant.  He is a PWP who, along with his son, won Amazing Race Canada despite coming in last at every leg of the race except the last one. He said they could have dropped out at any point, but because they stayed in the race, they won. Likewise,  when it comes to living well with Parkinson’s, he said, getting the most out of life requires the determination to “stay in the race.”

The importance of proper nutrition was another hot topic. Recent research revealed that gut microbiome is an important and emerging field in the understanding a person’s nutritional status in PD, how it relates to the risk of PD, symptom management and potential disease modification. A key concept is that bad bacteria eat protein and animal fat and good bacteria eat dietary fiber. So, by eating plants and fewer protein and animal fat you will tend to have more of the good bacteria in your gut. This may be like cutting off an enemy’s food supply and may slow the progression of the disease.

Another important point was that in PD inflammation is thought to cause the dysfunction and death of cells. Plant nutrients stimulate a passive immune system, serve as antioxidants and repair cell damage. The anti-inflammation diet can also help your body help itself.

Finally, I attended a session on new treatments for dyskinesia, which is abnormal involuntary movements that are a side effect of the PD medicine carbodopa-levadopa; the medicine I take and the most effective in addressing PD symptoms. I believe I am starting to experience this condition, so I was very interested in the session entitled “Novel therapeutic approaches for dyskinesia”. Unfortunately, the session turned out to be fairly technical, and so I didn’t get a lot out of it, but it is encouraging to know that there are emerging therapies that minimize or prevent the condition. I will be talking to my doctor about steps I can take to prevent or alleviate these symptoms.

Nearly every moment of every day I am aware of the effects this disease is having on me. And although there are likely to be more challenges ahead, I know that if I adhere to the practices I learned at this conference, I can slow down those challenges and perhaps even avoid them entirely.