The Root Cause of Parkinson’s Disease & How To Prevent It - With Dr. Ray Dorsey

24:06Shawn Stevenson:Lisa Moscone, the best natural food source of DHA is going to be found in fish roe, aka fish eggs have upwards of three times more DHA per gram than the best fish sources. Fish sources are notably high in DHA, but fish eggs or fish roe is actually quite higher. Now, this is one of the big reasons why things like caviar are so expensive and also considered a delicacy, considered to be very valuable. But with the price point and also the quality and the freshness, keeping all of those factors in mind to make sure that we're taking advantage of these benefits. that can be found in fish roe, I recommend the fish roe from Paleo Valley.

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26:07Shawn Stevenson:So number one, this is insidious. It's not just something that's associated with, I think it's more of a concentrated exposure if we're talking about the dry cleaning industry, but it's been integrated into so many things that it have become just a normal part of our lives. And also, am I hearing like its ability to be broken down is very difficult. Would this be in this category of PFAS chemicals by chance? So it's not like a forever chemical, but it slowly breaks down. It can hang out for years. So this aerospace industry shut down in the 1980s or 1990s. And yet in 2018, they're finding unsafe levels 30, 40 years in people's homes.

26:47It begs the question, what's been going on for the decades before that, when the concentrations were even higher? And again, it's known to cause cancer. So, you know, we know cancer rates in the United States are going for people under 50. It's going up. Diseases have reasons. They don't just happen. They have reasons. And the reasons that people are getting cancer, I think, is trichloroethylene. I think one of the reasons that Parkinson's is one of the world's fastest growing brain diseases is trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene.

27:14Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. We're unknowingly stacking conditions against ourselves. And so, as you mentioned, just seeing so many of these newly invented chemical complexes being vehemently stamped as carcinogenic to humans, there's so many of them, and they're in so many different things, it's very difficult to escape them. And so this work and putting together the Parkinson's plan, you're addressing the biggest culprits. And also, number one, your work is about prevention. Prevention is the most powerful player in this. But also, what can we do to slow the progression? And we've got so many signs back things that you talk about in the book.

27:56Shawn Stevenson:The Parkinson's 25, for instance. Can you talk a little bit about that? What was the Parkinson's 25? Yeah. So if chemicals are causing these diseases, then these diseases must be preventable. And so if they're preventable, what can I as an individual, what can I do, take action to reduce my risk of ever getting Parkinson's disease? And if I already have Parkinson's, if I'm one of the 1.2 million Americans with Parkinson's, what are the things that I can do to possibly slow the rate of Parkinson's? So I always got asked this question. And so my colleague, Dr. Michael Okanai, came up with the Parkinson's 25, 25 actions people can take in their everyday lives to reduce their risk of Parkinson's.

28:31And if you already have the disease, possibly slow the progression. And so number one is to wash your produce, even your organic ones. So it turns out there are, in some cases, unsafe residues of pesticides on people's fruit and vegetables. And even organic ones can have, not only can they have residues of pesticides, which begs the question how they're getting pesticides on them, but can have unsafe levels of them. So I wash all my fruits and vegetables, like apples, for example, in water. It turns out the U.S. Department of Agriculture, when they measure the residues of pesticides, do so after holding it underwater for 15 to 20 seconds.

29:06So that's what the safety threshold is after 15 to 20 seconds. I don't know if anyone's ever held their apple under the faucet for 15 to 20 seconds. I add a little bit of soap because some pesticides are fat soluble and some of these pesticides can get in fat and your brain's covered in fat so i get really most concerned about the pesticides that are fat soluble and what role that they're playing so i wash it with basically soap and water you can get a vegetable wash i get it for like four dollars at the grocery store it lasts me six months or other people studies have suggested that vinegar and salt can do it so i have a big glass bowl i put my apples i buy organic where where possible and i put all my produce in a big bowl i give them a bath and i put them you know out in the bowl to be eaten at a later time and So that's, you know, one easy thing.

29:50We had an air purifier here earlier. So many of these chemicals are inhaled. Trichloroethylene is inhaled. So air purifiers can reduce exposure to particulate matter, can reduce exposure to volatile organic chemicals like trichloroethylene. So that can be done. A water filter on your water, you know, on your faucet at home can reduce exposure to pesticides or other chemicals in your water. We can talk about golf and exposure to pesticides. I mean, there are scores of things that we can do to decrease our risk of getting exposed to these chemicals in our everyday life. We put them together in the Parkinson's 25.

30:23We have almost like a tearaway thing in the back of book that gives each one of these to be done. Of course, there's only so much we can do as individuals. We can do other things in our community. And we can get rid of why we spraying pesticides on kids' schools and playgrounds. Right. I mean, you know, why are we putting soda in kids' schools? Why are we spraying nerve toxins on playgrounds and schools? You know, there are tons and tons of things that we can do in our community to do this. And then fundamentally, we can ban some of the most toxic chemicals. You know, we got rid of lead in paint and lead in gasoline.

30:57Today, lead levels in kids, our kids, 95 % lower than when we were. Our kids are smarter today because we got rid of lead in paint and lead in gasoline. We should use some of that intelligence to identify other ways to improve our environment, improve our health. So we never have to get these diseases. I mean, who wants to be a patient? Who wants to go to the doctor's office? Doctors are nice people, but people have better things to do. Who wants to get health insurance bills? Why are we spending$50 billion a year on caring for people with Parkinson's disease? And we spend less than$50 million.

31:32There are homes in Los Angeles and in Miami, Florida, that are sold for more money than we as a society invest in trying to prevent Parkinson's disease. Oh, my goodness.

31:42Shawn Stevenson:You know, part of any movement has examples, you know, like things that really stand out to people because so often like suffering is a solo act. Like you don't usually see what's going on behind closed doors. And so my initial exposure to knowing what Parkinson's was, was, you know, early on. And it was Muhammad Ali. It was Michael J. Fox. and I'm curious because, you know, we attribute certain, you know, this condition to certain things just unconsciously, you know, and I think in particular with Muhammad Ali, you know, and being a boxer and the head trauma and all these different things. So does that play any part?

32:29Shawn Stevenson:Can trauma, can, you know, insults to the brain contribute to this condition as well? So Dr. Michael Okun, with permission of his family, was one of the physicians who helped care for Muhammad Ali. And he wrote a paper in which he said that head trauma may have been contributing to it. I also wonder about, you know, he grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and I'm an agriculture area, my understanding. And so I worry, you know, was he exposed to pesticides, inhaling pesticides? And it turns out that head trauma increases your risk of Parkinson's, not surprisingly. Certain pesticides increase your risk of Parkinson's.

33:02And the interaction amplifies the risk. So you've talked a lot, you've talked about this, about the impact of mixtures and of chemicals coming together. And so you're not just exposed to one chemical or one toxin. You're often exposed to many, whether it's air pollution, whether that's cigarette smoke, whether that's pesticides if you're a farmer. And it's likely that sometimes the interaction among these environmental factors could be amplifying the risk and explain why some people exposed to these chemicals develop disease and why some people expose these chemicals don't.

33:32Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. and his daughter, Layla Ali, is really good friend. She's been on the show a couple of times, but really, really good friend. And just seeing this progression of her father or regression with this disease over time is heartbreaking. And that's another thing that you mentioned. Nobody wants to deal with a disease, but specifically we don't wanna suffer. And this is one of those things that we are suffering needlessly. It's a man-made condition. And there are things that we can do to help defend our bodies against this. And we need to do this stuff right now. And so I want to ask you about some more of these in the Parkinson's 25, if we can.

34:10Shawn Stevenson:Is that okay? Yeah, absolutely. All right. One of the other ones. Well, since we already mentioned dry cleaning, one of them is dry clean cautiously. What do you mean by that? Yeah. Do you know why we dry clean clothes? Please tell me. So we dry clean clothes so they don't shrink. Of course. Yeah. So the price of dry cleaning should not be Parkinson's disease. Right. It shouldn't be cancer. So there are green dry cleaners, and California has banned perchloroethylene the trichloroethylene with one additional chlorine atom. I think they're phasing it out, or it's already been eliminated. But other places, and in 2024, the United States government banned perchloroethylene with a phase-out over 10 years.

34:50Hopefully, that ban is going to be put into place. But still, 60%, I think, of dry cleaners in the United States still use perchloroethylene. And so I find a green dry cleaner. So when I dry clean clothes, fortunately for men, most shorts are launder, they're washed in water. But so if you're going to dry clean, use a green dry cleaner and you can find green dry cleaners. And if you can't get a green dry cleaner, take your clothes and air them out before you bring them into the home. So it turns out when you take the dry cleaning from the store into your car on your way home, you're breathing in the chemical.

35:26When you put it into your closet at home, it's now inside your home when you're breathing it in your home. So take off the bag, air it out before you bring it into the home so that when it does its off-gassing before it enters your closet. How about before you get into the car? Yeah, you can do it to the car, too. Or if you can, again, look for green drive cleaners. And that's why I just recently moved to New York City and I spent a couple days finding it green.

35:52Shawn Stevenson:Yeah, I did the same here. So the dry cleaning that I have done, you know, is a green dry cleaner. And again, it's becoming more prevalent because of disinformation and people like yourself, and especially you really leading the charge on this message. So, you know, I say I'm sometimes a PR agent for Dr. Caroline Tanner. So Caroline Tanner is a Parkinson's disease expert who got a PhD in epidemiology from Berkeley because she was a Parkinson's specialist and she was concerned about these environmental causes and she wanted to go at them rigorously. So after doing all her neurology training, after being a neurologist, she went back to get a PhD.

36:28I mean, who does that? And so she has quietly, politely, she's this, you know, in my mind, she's like five foot eight. She's a giant. But when you meet her, she's like five feet tall. And, you know, this most unassuming person has quietly told us for 40 years what the environmental causes of Parkinson's disease are. If we paid attention to her work, we could live in a world where Parkinson's disease is increasingly rare.

36:50Shawn Stevenson:It's so powerful. So powerful. Another one is don't poison yourself. It sounds pretty obvious, but again, I don't think really think about this. And you talk about various insecticides, pesticides, flea collars, ant sprays, and all this stuff in particular. Sure. So number 11 is don't poison yourself. Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease. Insects, including fleas, ants, and moths can be unwanted. Unfortunately, some common pesticides can increase the risk of Parkinson's. For example, the pesticide permethrin found in flea collars, ant sprays, mothballs, and outdoor apparel can reduce dopamine-producing nerve cells in laboratory animals.

37:33Consider safer alternatives, and if necessary, minimize exposure by wearing a mask, increasing ventilation, and avoid spraying near children. So when I wrote our first book, Ending Parkinson's Disease, I didn't know about these causes of Parkinson's disease. I had heard vaguely about pesticides, but that was about it. So the more research I did, the more I thought about it. And so I went into our garage. We used to live in Rochester, New York, and I found pesticides linked to Parkinson's disease in my garage. And so here I am, a Parkinson's specialist, trying to get people to prevent Parkinson's disease.

38:10Yet I've been an unknowing consumer of chemicals that are linked to the disease.

38:15Shawn Stevenson:Yeah, when I was reading, that was the first time I ever associated a flea collar with these chemicals. Like I just thought it was magic. You know, when I was a kid, put the little flea collar on Smokey and, you know, it's just, it is what it is. I didn't think about the chemical complex and the off-gassing of that particular device to be able to do what it says it's supposed to do. Yeah. And you know, people are spraying it in their lawns. They're spraying it on golf courses. They're spraying it everywhere. You mentioned golf courses. So let's talk about this. Another one, mind your greens. So I was like, oh, is he about to talk about spinach?

38:49Shawn Stevenson:But you were talking about the golf course. So my colleague, Dr. Brittany Krasinowski, who's a geographer, so she maps things. And her colleagues came out with a study the last two weeks showing that people who live near a golf course, within a mile of a golf course in Rochester, Minnesota, have 124 % increased risk of developing Parkinson's. Living with one mile of a golf course in Rochester, Minnesota, is associated with 124 % increased risk of Parkinson's disease. And why is that? And so it's likely certain pesticides because pesticides are sprayed on golf courses. I think one study suggested that pesticides per acre are sprayed with 80 times as much pesticides as agricultural areas are.

39:32And some of these pesticides, including a pesticide called chlorpyrifloss, which used to be found on over half of apples in the United States. So if you've had an apple in the United States, you've likely eaten this pesticide, which damages dopamine-producing nerve cells. And it's been associated with Parkinson's studies, widely used on golf courses. So I think people who are living near golf courses, the reason that they might be at high risk is they're getting exposed to these chemicals. It's almost like secondhand smoke. You know, they're not smoking. they're not applying the pesticides they're just innocent bystanders and you know what led to us banning cigarettes you know in restaurants and airplanes including here beginning in california was people said if people want to smoke that's their business but you know i don't want to be at the bar or in the airplane breathing the toxic chemicals that are from somebody else and so i think this is a great example there's one study done by dr beata ritz and kimberly paul here in Los Angeles that showed people who simply live near where a certain weed killer called paraquat is sprayed have a doubling of their risk of Parkinson's disease.

40:34Simply living near where a weed killer is sprayed doubles your risk of Parkinson's disease. And so I think we can, there are organic golf courses. So why can't we create more organic golf courses? Why can't we ask golf courses to reduce their pesticide use by 50 %? Why can't we ask them to use safer alternatives? Some of these pesticides that are being used are from the 1950s and 1960s. You drive in a car and you fly in an airplane, you don't drive in a car from the 1950s or one step in an airplane from the 1960s. If engineers can come up with safer modes of transportation, chemists can certainly come up with safer pesticides.

41:11Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. Yeah. We just don't think about it. We see those beautiful greens out there. We don't think about all the careful manicuring and all the stuff that's used from the weed killers to the insecticides and all this stuff, it comes at a cost. So just be mindful of that. And that's what Rachel Carson wrote about in Silent Spring in 1962. Pesticides like DDT played a role in preventing people from getting malaria. But she was warning about the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Think about pesticides on school playgrounds. Really? Yeah. To what end? And so she was worried about the effect on the environment and on birds, so that your spring, instead of hearing birds chirp, you'd have a silent spring.

41:50She told us in 1962, she warned us that new diseases would appear in farming communities that would puzzle the doctors in the cities. She was even predicting like diseases like Parkinson's would become increasingly common. We listened to Rachel Carson in 1962. We could prevent lots of people from getting intellectual disabilities, from getting ALS, from getting Parkinson's disease, from getting cancer.

42:15Shawn Stevenson:this is cracking the door open a little bit on the monetization of diseases because the information's been out there for quite some time. Yeah. Yeah. I think you get to some uncomfortable conclusions. You know, I've been trained at reasonably good institutions. I'm a reasonably bright guy. How come I didn't know about this for the vast majority of my academic career? How come I wasn't taught. And I think one of the problems in American medicine, listen, it does fantastic things, but we go from disease to treatment, disease to treatment. You know, someone's depressed, antidepressant, someone's anxious, anti-anxiety medication, someone's Parkinson's to treat them with medications to treat it.

42:54But we need to ask why. So if you go from disease to why, disease to cause, you can, one, identify the underlying cause. Once you identify the underlying cause, it's a lot easier to figure out what the appropriate treatment is for it. You can figure out how to slow the progression. And then most powerfully, you can prevent the disease. So instead of going from type 2 diabetes to a medication, why don't we say what's causing the type 2 diabetes and address that, like you've written about and talked about with hundreds of guests on your show. And I think if you find out what the underlying cause of these neurological conditions, why are brain diseases the leading source of disability in the world, more than heart disease, more than cancer, more than infectious diseases, why are diseases increasingly common.

43:33I think you find out that for many of them, they have their roots not so much in our genes. The genetic contributions to Parkinson's are modest. The genetic contributions to ALS are modest. Even the genetic contributions to Alzheimer's disease is in the moderate range. Most of these diseases have their roots in our environment. If we clean up our environment, we make it so that people can live into their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s without giving Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's. These diseases are not natural consequences of aging. They're unnatural consequences of aging. None of our early presidents, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, age 90, Thomas Jefferson at 83, did not have Alzheimer's disease, did not have Parkinson's disease.

44:12Dr. Parkinson in 1817 saying this has not been classified in the medical literature, it's not been around. And that's just 200 years ago. If we clean up our food, water, and air, we create a world where these diseases are increasingly rare. Instead of increasing common, we save people, society, lots of money, and we save lots of people suffering, a lot of suffering that's been silent.

44:32Shawn Stevenson:How dare you bring so much logic today? I mean, I mean, come on. You know, you mentioned chlorpyrifos or chlorpyrifos. Chlorpyrifos, but you know. Either way. Anyway. Tomato, tomato, but chlorpyrifos is one of those that's been caught up in red tape for years. Years, you know, and we've got multiple studies affirming birth defects, you know, in particular for workers who are exposed to it. We've got data on it being disruptive to microbial genes and not just our genes, but the genes of our microbes. And it's just kind of, you know, rampant use in particular with some commodity cash crops, things like coffee.

45:14Shawn Stevenson:You know, you mentioned coffee earlier and being decaffeinated with another chemical. And then we got these chemicals using growth of it. And people are just drinking a piping hot cup of chemicals and they're just trying to, you know, have some coffee and they don't, they're just not aware that this is happening. Can I tell you a chlorpyrifos story? Go for it. So chlorpyrifos was used to be used to kill insects, cockroaches in homes in New York City. And this great scientist, Dr. Virginia Rall at Columbia University, she looked at women who were in those households and the outcomes of their children.

45:47So one, she found chlorpyrifos in the umbilical cord blood of the children. And then she followed these children forward. And the higher the level of chlorpyrifos in the umbilical cord blood, the lower the IQ at 3, 5, and 7. So we're wondering what's fueling the rise of intellectual disabilities, what's fueling the rise of autism. Why do 1 in 36 children have autism today? I think there are chemicals in our food, water, and air that are fueling the rise of these diseases. you know we're almost substituting the effects of lead you know we got the lead out and we got people's lead levels 95 percent lower what a great accomplishment 95 percent lower kids are smarter and then we're exposing them to other nerve toxins in the form of pesticides if we stop this our kids are smarter there's less autism there's less intellectual disabilities there's less expenditures there's less suffering you know suffering may be part of the human condition but needless preventable suffering should not be.

46:46Shawn Stevenson:Yes. Yes. Since I mentioned coffee, one of the Parkinson's 25 is to have a cup of caffeinated coffee. You specifically said caffeinated coffee. Talk about that one. Yeah. So this is your coffee drinkers. It turns out that caffeine may be protective of nerve cells and that it appears that it's the caffeine, not the coffee. So there've been studies that have associated caffeine consumption with a reduced risk of Parkinson's. So if you already drink your caffeinated coffee, this is a reason to continue. Now, caffeine has some other side effects. I'm a neurologist. It can cause headaches. It can cause anxiety.

47:22So if you're enjoying your cup of caffeinated coffee, you can continue to do so.

47:26Shawn Stevenson:All right. Some people are like, yeah, I knew it. Another one of these that I wanted to ask you about was Sleep Well. Well, you know far more about this than I do. Your book is outstanding on the topic. And as you point out, a University of Rochester neuroscientist, Megan Mierdegard, has demonstrated that sleep is a key point in time when we flush out toxins through something called the glymphatic system. I was listening to some of your podcasts on the subject last night. And so that sleep, I think 10 times more active, as you pointed out, at night than it is during the daytime. So sleep's a great time to clear out toxins.

48:04So if you're working or you're getting exposed to these toxins, it might even be more important. And, you know, you know this topic far more than I do. But, you know, eight to nine hours of sleep can do wonders for clearing out toxins from your brain. I love it.

48:18Shawn Stevenson:I love it. Of course, there isn't any aspect of your health that isn't going to be impacted by prioritizing good sleep. But this is another reason, just another checkmark for us to make this something that is important. And it gives you an explanation for why. Right. So I think, you know, our grandparents and our grandmas, you know, you need to sleep well. They didn't know necessarily why, but now we have the mechanism by which their advice has proved to be true. Yeah. So again, we think about all of these like active things that we need to do, but sometimes we need to be inactive, you know, to slow down, let the body do what it knows how to do already, get out of the way.

48:55Shawn Stevenson:And it's sleep that there's this powerful mechanism of detoxification that takes place. and we are living in an increasingly toxic environment. And so it's like a superpower. It's our ability to jack into our own charging station and clear out a lot of this waste, give our body the chance, give it a fighting chance to do this work. Another one of these was exercise. And this one in particular, again, there's a lot of new information coming out on the importance of exercise. Humans have been moving forever. We just kind of stopped. But why in particular? What's the connection with exercise and Parkinson's?

49:33So in the 1890s, one of the top neurologists was Sir William Gowers, and he wrote the Bible of Neurology. And he said for people with Parkinson's disease, the treatment should be a life of quiet rest. He was wrong. So one of the great advances this century is that the benefits of exercise for people with Parkinson's disease. So numerous studies have suggested that vigorous exercise, the clemen to like three and a half to four hours a week can not only reduce your risk of ever getting the disease, but can be immensely beneficial. Exercise for people with Parkinson's disease or just in general releases growth factors in the brain, brain-derived growth factors that protect the remaining nerve cells that might be damaged in Parkinson's disease.

50:19But this exercise thing is just unbelievable in terms of its benefits. There was a study last week in Newman Journal of Medicine that looked at people with colon cancer. So they looked at people who had colon cancer, who had already had surgery, and already had chemotherapy. Their average age was 60. They randomized them to give an educational brochure on the benefits of exercise or an exercise training program where they met once a week with a trainer for an exercise program for three years and then followed them out for an average of eight years. They found that the risk of cancer recurrence among those in the intervention group was 27 % lower.

50:56The risk of dying in eight years was 37 % lower. The risk of death was 37 % lower. If you treated 14 people with colon cancer with the exercise treatment, you prevented one death. The intervention group, they only exercise on average three hours extra per week, three hours of brisk walking extra per week, and you reduce the risk of cancer recurrence and to reduce the risk of death. If this is happening in 60-year-olds who already had colon cancer and have already had surgery and already had chemotherapy, what does it mean for Parkinson's disease? What does it mean for our health in general? I just think that the evidence is increasingly clear.

51:35Dr. Peter Atiyah says that for neurodegenerative diseases, the first and most effective intervention is exercise full stop. You know, the benefits are hard to be understated. And you said something also in one of your things about sunlight. I tell my kids, and again, I'm not an expert in this, but I tell my kids three things. One, they should be outside. Two, they should be with their friends. They should be social. And three, they should be physically active. If you're outside, physically active and social, you guys have enormous health benefits.

52:04Shawn Stevenson:Yeah, I love that. And these are epigenetic influences. And now we, again, we're existing in this glorified snow globe that's just riddled with newly invented chemicals that are influencing our genes as well. we can proactively influence them in a positive way. Yes, and we can clear these chemicals up. We got rid of CFCs. We've gotten rid of lead. We've gotten rid of DDT. We've done this time and time again. We need to do the same thing. Our generation right now needs to rise up, make their voices heard and say, we don't need pesticides on our kids' playgrounds. Thank you very much. We don't need pesticides on our kids' schools.

52:35We don't need it on our sports fields. We think golf courses can have 50 % less pesticides. We can use safer alternatives. Instead of subsidizing crop production with pesticides, why don't we subsidize, if we're going to subsidize crops, why don't we subsidize crops without pesticide use? I mean, there are tons and tons of things that we can be doing. $15 billion a year of our taxpayer money is going to subsidize the production of crops using pesticides. Only 1 % goes to subsidizing production of crops that are organic. Shouldn't it be the other way around if we're going to subsidize anything?

53:09Shawn Stevenson:Damn logic. So what can people expect when they pick up a copy of the Parkinson's plan? We give you constructive solutions. So we paint out, the first half is painting out the problem. What are the chemicals in our food for chapter one, water, chapter two, indoor air, chapter three, and outdoor air, chapter four, that are fueling the rise of Parkinson's disease. And then we talk about how we need to learn why diseases start. So if we learn why diseases start, we can prevent them from happening and more effectively treat them. We need to amplify the voices of those affected. The silence around the suffering needs to end.

53:44We need to amplify the voices of Michael J. Fox. We need to amplify the voices of the Ali family. We need to amplify the voices of Davis Finney, of Brian Grant, and 1.2 million Americans with the disease. And we need to navigate the frontiers of new treatments. And in Chapter 10, we give you a plan. We give you 20 steps that we as individuals in our communities and as societies can take to prevent and treat Parkinson's disease. And we have three goals. I'll give you an example. In 2013, UNAIDS came up with three goals to change the course of HIV. And those goals were 90, 90, and 90. They said that by 2020, 90 % of HIV should be diagnosed, 95 % of individuals who are diagnosed with HIV should be treated, and 90 % of those who are treated should have the virus levels suppressed in their bloodstream.

54:31And that way you can prevent HIV. The incidence of HIV today is at its lowest level since 1990. You know, we're in Los Angeles. Magic Johnson, courageous man, shared his story with HIV. Everyone thought he was going to die, but we changed the course of it. HIV is preventable with a condom because we figured out what the cause of the disease is. So in our book, we give you 0, 10, 100. We say that in 10 years when we come back and speak in 2035, that 100 % of people with Parkinson's will be able to have access to the most effective medication, levodopa, safe, inexpensive, highly effective. If we can give 90 % of people with HIV access to expensive, complex medications, why can't we give 100 % of people with Parkinson's access?

55:13By 2035, we will increase research funding tenfold for Parkinson's, and we will increase the proportion focused on preventing the disease tenfold. Right now, out of every Parkinson's research dollar, only two pennies, two cents, goes to preventing the disease. If we take that from two pennies to two dimes, we will change the course of this disease. And finally, zero. By 2035, the rise of Parkinson's disease, the global increase in the incidence of Parkinson's will be zero percent. That adjusted for age, we will flatten the rise of Parkinson's disease. So in 2036, we start talking about the fall of Parkinson's disease.

55:49And I can't think of a greater gift that, you know, you're focused on health. I'm focused on health. I'm passionate about Parkinson's disease. What a great gift to future generations in the world where Parkinson's is increasingly rare instead of increasingly common. Where that, you know, maybe when Dr. James Parkinson discusses the thing in 2117, 300 years later, that again is a rare condition. And it's only in the textbook. It's only classified in the medical literature. And it's absent from the world. This has been phenomenal. I'm so grateful for this conversation. What's the best place for people to pick up a copy?

56:22So they can go, they can get it on Amazon. They can get at their favorite books store, or you can just go to our website, pdplan.org. Michael and I are going to devote the vast majority of our proceeds from selling this book to efforts to prevent and treat Parkinson's disease.

56:36Shawn Stevenson:Thank you for doing this work, truly. I mean, it just helps me. I feel more at peace knowing that there are people like you who are focused on this specific topic and shining such a bright light and paving a way for a better future. This is powerful. So I really do appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me. Amazing. The one and only Dr. Ray Dorsey. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today. This is such an important conversation and one that we need to spread far and wide. We need to get this information out there and truly it is of the utmost importance. As mentioned when I started this episode, the number of people with Parkinson's disease more than doubled from 1990 to 2015 and could double again by 2040.

57:22Shawn Stevenson:We've got to break this cycle. and education is a huge part of this. So please share this out far and wide, share it on social media and tag Dr. Ray Dorsey as well and share your voice, share your heart. And of course you can send this directly from the podcast app that you're listening on, but just engage, share this. This information really does matter. We've got some incredible episodes coming your way, some powerful masterclasses and some world leading experts and all these incredible topics in health and fitness. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon.

57:59Shawn Stevenson:And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.