Unmasking Parkinson's, Part 1

CPR for Life

Dr. Duarte Machado is a neurologist specializing in Parkinson's Disease and has a personal connection with this condition. He is a leader in helping care for those with Parkinson's. In this episode, he takes away some of the mystery around this disease. Learn if what you're seeing, or experiencing, might be Parkison's and what that means.

Find out how you can make meaningful, tangible, durable improvements to your health at cprhealthclinic.com

Schedule a free consultation.

(Below is a portion of the AI-generated transcript. If you want the whole thing, check out cprhealthclinic.com)

Dr. Sagar: Thank you everyone for joining us on this new season of CPR for Life. This time we'll be delving into Parkinson's disease.

Unfortunately, it's a growing scourge, but the good news is you do have some control. Joining me today, luckily, is the perfect person. To help us explore this topic, Dr. Duarte Machado is a board-certified neurologist with subspecialty training in movement disorders, aka Parkinson's and other things like that. He committed to a career caring for those with movement disorders while still just a high school student when his grandma was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He completed neurology residency and fellowship training at the Yale School of Medicine. He practiced at Yale for some time, but is now the Director of Program Excellence and Recognition at the Chase Family Movement Disorder Center in Hartford, Connecticut.

He's also deeply involved with research, and education, and has extensive experience in deep brain stimulation. On top of all that, he also serves on the Board of Directors of the American Parkinson's Disease Association, Connecticut chapter, in addition to other leadership roles such For other societies, Dr.

Machado, welcome to the program. And thank you for being here.

Dr. Duarte: Oh, thank you so much for having me here.

Dr. Sagar: Yeah. So that's an interesting story that you were just a high school student. That's a rare thing to know what you're going to do with your entire life. When you're still in high school, tell us more about what happened with your grandma and how that impacted you.

Dr. Duarte: Yeah. So my parents are, they're both immigrants and they came to this country to really achieve the American dream of providing opportunities for their children. They both have a fourth grade education only. And they were came here with little skills and so, settled in a blue collar town and did factory work.

And so I didn't have. Much knowledge about what opportunities there were beyond what my parents were doing. And they would only emphasize, please get as best an education you can so that you can do more than the type of work that we're doing. So when my grandmother then was diagnosed with Parkinson's, it was the first major illness that, that we had.

Came to our family and she, , lived just a few houses down from where I lived and we were very close. And at the time I was a high school freshman and started, , went to a visit with her and was just odd at learning more about this condition that now afflicted her. And I said, this is what I want to do this, to learn more about this particular condition and learn how to help her and many others with this ailment.

So, by the time I was a senior in high school, I said, I'm only applying to programs that have neuroscience majors. And then even. Went through 4 years at an undergrad and then went directly to medical school at UConn and knew right off the bat that I wanted to be a neurologist, even though exposed to many other fields and in the 3rd year.

Still neurology was number one and movement disorders in particular. So I never missed a beat in my path to get to where I am now. Yeah,

Dr. Sagar: were called to it and you're a man on a mission. Even still, we're just talking about how you just finished seeing some patients. As soon as we're done, you're still going to see some more patients. There was no, no rest.

Dr. Duarte: right.

Dr. Sagar: tell me more about what you saw in your grandma and use that to help us understand what the heck Parkinson's disease actually is.

Dr. Duarte: Yeah, so Parkinson's the diseases whereby there is a loss over time of. Cells that make a neurochemical called dopamine and dopamine is the main neurochemical necessary for initiation of movement. So the main cardinal feature of Parkinson's is slowness of movement that people just take longer to initiate that motion.

So there's slowness in their ability to. to move that in conjunction with other symptoms such as tremor or stiffness or what's called postural instability or change in posture. Those four motor features constitute the primary symptoms of Parkinson's. So not everyone has to have tremor. So there are subtypes of Parkinson's depending on the, what motor symptoms are present.

Certainly I saw this, that slowness of movement and some postural change with my grandmother that initially as is seen often, is attributed to aging. But certainly there, one can differentiate between what's normal aging and what's abnormal aging. And with her she also had some other symptoms that, pointed to this being abnormal, and for her to seek the care of a neurologist.

Dr. Sagar: What do you mean by postural changes? How does a person look different?