Parkinson

Scientists stated that Parkinson’s can be predicted relatively precisely up to 12 years previous to the first muscle tremors emerge. People diagnosed with an abnormal sleep condition called REM sleep disorder, in which they physically act out their dreams by kicking, screaming and even harming themselves and others lying next to them, are 18% more likely to develop a neurodegenerative disease like dementia or Parkinson’s within five years of their analysis, and 52% more likely after 12 years.

The most recent thinking on the disease holds that the uncontrolled movements that are the hallmark of Parkinson’s are only the newest and most advanced sign of the disease, the final stage of a 10- or 20-year steady decline in nerve function. In fact, experts consider that the condition actually begins with a loss of smell and a degeneration of nerves in the olfactory tract, and then proceeds to the gut and brain stem.

REM sleep disorder is a rare condition not to be confused with the tossing and turning that most of us do every night. People with the condition have vivid movements nearly every night, and unlike those who sleepwalk or sleep talk and remain perplexed for a bit after they awake, these patients are totally alert and oriented once they wake up.

REM sleep disorder itself can be treated with medications, but those drugs won’t slow the decline in nerve function that’s accountable for Parkinson’s. But identifying the disease at this earlier stage may help scientists come up with newer ways of shielding the motor neurons from further damage.