World Parkinson's Congress - day 1

Mediterranean diet, Macca, and one glass of wine

Jul 05, 2023

As I walked into the vast echoing space that is Barcelona’s International Convention Centre out near the sea, I suddenly realised i had been here before. The last time it was for a typically over the top Samsung press conference at Mobile World Congress where we all found a virtual reality headset under our chairs, then the real (I think) Mark Zuckerberg appeared on stage to boast of how Facebook and the Korean giant were going to work together to do wonderful things with VR.

This time I was here for a much more important event World Parkinson’s Congress, where, hopefully, leading doctors, researchers and members of the global Parkinson’s community will paint a more accurate picture of the future than Zuckerberg managed back in 2015.

Feeling slightly weary after an early start and a long trek to the event on a hot day, I dropped into a half-filled seminar room expecting to have a quick snooze. But so arresting was the speaker and her subject, nutrition and Parkinson’s, that I immediately felt refreshed. Richelle Flanagan, who could teach the Meta founder a thing or two about engaging an audience, is a dietitian who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s some years ago.

She enthused about the benefits of a Mediterranean diet - olive oil, lots of vegetables, pulses and so on - for controlling our condition without ever sounding prescriptive. Dairy products for example are often thought of as a no-no, particularly eaten in conjunction, with your pills. Richelle, though, pointed to the paradox that while there is some evidence that dairy could be linked to the development of Parkinson’s, there’s also research showing it may slow cognitive decline. Her advice to me when I caught up with her afterwards was that 200g of dairy a day was about right but that meant my passion for cheese had to be restrained. Her overall message - that physicians treating Parkinson’s need to take diet far more seriously - came through loud and clear.

Later, it was on to an opening ceremony featuring dance, music, and a welcome video from Sir Paul McCartney, who lost a childhood friend to Parkinson’s. Then a reception for all attendees where I obeyed Richelle’s advice to stick to one glass of wine, and met more fascinating people. There were. any number of top neurologists and researchers, a Ugandan campaigner whose mother had died alone with Parkinson’s and was determined to lift the veil of secrecy about the condition, technologists promoting products which might control symptoms, Joy Milne, the amazing woman who can smell Parkinson’s and is helping to develop a fast test, and dozens of fellow Parkies from across the world, all of us desperately trying not to spill our drinks over each other.

One young medical researcher on the Cure Parkinson’s stand summed it up for me. He said it was unlike any other medical conference he had been to because the patients were there and they often seemed to know more than the practitioners.

But on that note Cure Parkinson’s has some research out today which shows that awareness of the condition amongst the general public is worryingly low. While 1 in 3 adults in the UK know someone with Parkinson’s, less than a fifth know it’s the
world’s fastest growing neurological condition, with most believing that to be Alzheimer’s.

Only two out of more than 40 symptoms of Parkinson’s are widely recognised by the British public – shaking and problems with balance - with very low awareness of problems such as depression, freezing of gait and loss of a sense of smell.

When the charity talks of the danger of a Parkinson’s pandemic that might sound like hyperbole, but Cure Parkinson’s says the condition is increasing exponentially and it wants policymakers and the public to wake up to the threat.

More on World Parkinson’s Congress in the next few days. And as my fellow Movers and Shakers Gillian Lacey-Solymar and Paul Mayhew-Archer are here too, perhaps we’ll get round to a little light podcasting too.