Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library was the best contribution to child literacy ever made by a celebrity. Our paths crossed once, in the 90s, backstage at a talk show, and I was completely tongue-tied and starstruck. RIP Dolly. You were a complete, irreplaceable one-off.
The Jason Arday story has been delicious. But the problem goes well beyond race and academia. Would Andrea Long Chu, a vicious, porn-addled misogynist, really have won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism if he hadn’t claimed to be a woman?
Woman-hate is widely regarded as a sign of edgy brilliance, and its totally acceptable so long as the man spouting it has changed his pronouns.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth they won't say out loud:
$65 for 3 lab tests that could alter the quality of life for Parkinson's patients, yet they aren't ordered.
Levodopa itself drives up your body’s need for B12 (and folate/B6). When it breaks down, it floods the system with homocysteine. Clearing that requires those B vitamins, day after day, dose after dose. Over years this quietly depletes them.
Low B12 and high homocysteine don’t just sit there as lab numbers. They cause fatigue, brain fog, cognitive slips, tingling, balance issues, and neuropathy that look exactly like Parkinson’s progression.
So what happens?
You report the new symptoms. Your neurologist sees “worsening PD.” They raise the levodopa, add another agonist, throw in more meds for “off” times or mood or sleep. More side effects pile on. You feel worse. For most, Dyskinesia begins. The cycle continues.
All while a simple blood test and cheap B12 + folate could have pulled those symptoms back.
This is not fringe science. The mechanism has been in the literature for decades. Reviews keep confirming it. Yet it is still not standard care.
Why?
*Because guidelines lag. Because “it’s not part of the protocol.”
*Because insurance and clinic workflows don’t reward checking a nutrient that might reduce the need for more expensive drugs.
*Because many neurologists still treat the motor score and assume every new symptom is the disease marching on.
I was one of those people, on 1200 mg carb/levodopa, suffering with respiratory dyskinesia.
No one tested my B12, folate, or homocysteine for years. Not until I landed in a clinical trial for an “off”-symptom drug. I was already taking folate for RA meds and, because of my MTHFR variant, only the methylated form worked. Once the labs finally got ordered, the picture changed. Symptoms that had been blamed on Parkinson’s weren’t purely Parkinson’s.
That’s the scandal.
Patients are being escalated on dopaminergic drugs and living with the side effects while a reversible, treatable deficiency that mimics the disease is left unexamined.
Demand the labs. B12, folate, homocysteine (and MMA if the numbers are borderline).
Don’t wait for your neurologist to offer them. Most still won’t.
The system knows. It just hasn’t decided your quality of life is worth the extra checkbox.
@oneleftshoe@GadSaad@DanBurmawy@GretaThunberg Nothing in my first response spoke about jihadist ideology. So, again, you are determined to misinterpret what you're reading, which, in all honesty, makes me question your reading and critical thinking skills.