A Simple Three Minutes of Your Time Can Go A Long Way to Help Parkinson's Disease Research
Back in my biochemistry graduate school days, we commonly volunteered in
colleagues' experiments. Usually it was for free, for those requiring
blood or other invasive procedures there was sometimes a small stipend.
Adventurous ones included eating chili made largely out of cartilage (not
tasty, so you probably don't want the recipe), then seeing if breakdown
products showed up in the urine. This was part of a study that involved a
project to develop a test to see if emphysema could be seen in urine, it wasn't
product testing for cartilaginous chili. The most interesting one I did
was one where my blood was drawn, stored, tagged with a minute amount of
radioactive isotope, and then were reinjected. It was done to help
develop a safer way to store blood. The amount of radioactivity from this
was much less than the amount of radiation I was exposing myself to while
working in my lab, so it had negligible side-effects and allowed many jokes
about what sort of superpowers we were going to develop. While getting
paid was nice, it was nice to know that you were helping humanity better understand
how we're put together, and that you might be helping science to teach doctors
how to better care for others.
Researchers at MIT and Oxford University are Collecting Voice
Samples Everyday
This is an easy way
you can help contribute to research and testing on Parkinson's disease. There
are characteristic effects that Parkinson's has on voice; researchers at MIT
and Oxford University are collecting voice samples from all around the world,
for people with and without Parkinson's disease, to develop a computer analysis
to detect Parkinson's disease by speech analysis. Parkinson's is an often
debilitating disease characterized by shaking, difficulty walking, slowness of
movement and speech. I've seen patients for it, chiropractic and physical
therapy does not treat or reverse the disease, but we can help with the pain
and balance, and help with home exercises to help improve the gait somewhat.
Medication is often helpful, more research is ongoing.
You Can Participate! Researchers are Seeking 10,000 Healthy
Individuals to Serve as Controls
The researchers are trying to get 10,000 healthy individuals as controls, they had 5,000 or so at last count. They don't ask for money, the call is anonymous, but you can help in progress on understanding and treating the disease. The numbers to call and more info on the study are here: http://www.parkinsonsvoice.org/
I called, it was short, less than three minutes, and painless.
Dr. Ginsburg
