Interview with Colin Potter - How He Dramatically Improved His Parkinson's Symptom's

hey I'm Sarah King physical therapist and founder of invigorate physical therapy and wellness here in Austin Texas and if you're someone diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and you're looking for a few more answers and maybe even some alternative approaches to your Parkinson's disease I really have a treat for you today my guest here is Colin Potter he is the founder of fight Parkinson's dot-org and he himself was diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 61 which was about five years ago and two years ago he really started on this quest to find answers to his Parkinson's diagnosis because he had reached a point where getting out of bed getting out of a chair even walking more than 15 minutes at a time was really an arduous task so he started searching the research to see what was out there to answer the question where do neurological disorders come from and what can be done about them so he's joining me today in Austin Texas and Colin we're so happy to have you here it's a great pleasure so have you liked Austin so far oh hi Sara well I'm really delighted to be in Austin I've been here four or five days now and what a wonderful city you have what lovely warm vibrant people you have here too we hope you really be made feel very very welcome oh and I came in with a particular mission which who find out exactly what was going on with Parkinson's because you've got a lot of great things happening here and I wanted to see for myself exactly what was going on and I've been able to meet with you function functional medicine doctor a holistic neurologist and of course I've met with you and seen the wonderful things that you're doing and that's what I plan to take back to the UK and to our many five Parkinson's followers wonderful well we're happy to have you in Austin is kind of a unique place for that as far as alternative approaches go you know we kind of have this reputation in Austin to keep it weird and you know we just are always seeking those kind of alternative options and not really being okay with the status quo and I've seen a real evolution in medicine transitioning towards options that are really outside of the pill bottle and I feel like hearing your story has been so inspirational to me because I think that after I heard your story I really understood that I wanted to really talk with you more about your journey and my question for you would be what made you decide to seek this alternative approach to Parkinson's well I was when I was first diagnosed it really was I was told that Parkinson's was a degenerative incurable disease I required to take drugs and then just take my medicine and suffer whatever comes my way but the one thing the doctors couldn't answer for me was what was the cause of Parkinson's but of course they say the cause was lack of dopaminergic producing neurons but what had caused that to stop and I didn't understand that and I couldn't understand why they didn't have an answer to what causes that and that's what started me on my journey and I don't have them straightaway because I said I went for two years following medical advice and taking my levodopa medication but I wasn't getting any better and then I kind of had this this Eureka moment which was I need to do something about it and this this this really came at my son's wedding three years ago and I thought I'm not getting better I really performed badly at the wedding I had to fly to California and I performed badly the wedding I gave a speech and my arms were jerking like a marionette because there's the kind of stress type situation and afterwards my back was so painful my rigidity in my back I just had to sit down and just watch the whole party go ahead without me participating and people came out and say I was sorry about you being so nervous with the speech that I'm not nervous this is Parkinson's and that's what set me on my journey to say is this something else and there's something triggered that and that was the very good fortune and someone passed me a book called brain brain by dr. David Perlmutter and that's where dr. pomatter explains and what I liked about it not just explained he demonstrated through research and the vast amount of research out there that Parkinson's can be caused by lifestyle and that's where that can be fixed by lifestyle then I'm going to fix myself by lifestyle and that was the trigger for me to took a start conducting my research and since then it's been totally all-consuming to study what's out there and then start sharing it with others right so what was it from grain brain that really opened your eyes to this new approach what kinds of things did you learned from grain brain specifically to start you on this well it focuses our lifestyle really a scent really centers around diet and when you start reading all the research it says for the last 60 years we've been on the wrong diet and you look around you and you see all the diseases that are proliferating diabetes Alzheimer's depression Crohn's disease chronic chronic digestive issues these are all fairly new you know relatively new new inventions were in terms of numbers of people so that's was there is something there so something is causing that and he points towards diet and then was more specific and starts talking about sugars and carbohydrates and gluten all been toxic to the body and I thought well I can fix that and that's a straightforward thing for me to go about and pigs but what I really liked was it wasn't someone you get so many books with someone's expanding our theory but it's not supported what I like everything about he didn't it called it with my my kind of thinking the way I died it was backed by research and everything I've done since then has always been centered around following the research which I sadly gets ignored by virtually all our doctors or certainly all the conventional medicine doctors but not fortunately doctors vindicated medicine and functional medicine and then the holistic and treating people holistically right and so from grain brain how did your diet change right then well grain brain pointed me towards PubMed PubMed is this fantastic resource run by the US government by the National Institute of Health and which contains that 25 millions research on 25 million different studies conducted at universities and other accredited clinical research facilities and I simply went and entered into PubMed ketogenic diet or no diet and Parkinson's and up popped research on the ketogenic diet which is essentially is a high-fat low-carbohydrate diet and that showed there was a study oh yes it was in Columbia University in New York which pointed to a diet where Park ate Parkinson's patients had sub Parkinson's subjects were put on the ketogenic diet for a month and their symptoms were reduced by somewhere between 14 60 0.0 40 percent and that to me was well if it works for them it's not that difficult for me so go and try that myself and so that was life starting move I talked to my wife Barbara and we went straight onto the ketogenic diet so that high fat low low carbohydrate diet and that's what I went on so you saw others that others had had success and that triggered you to kind of believe in this process that it was actually possible you felt like you weren't forging a whole new world that somebody else had kind of been there before and it had worked so it was worth taking the risk and wondering if you ever thought what if this doesn't work did you ever have the the feeling of why would I start this if I don't know that it could actually work for me two things there everything I've done is low risk and heart and the opportunity of high reward so a risk of changing my diet of giving up carbohydrates and sugars and gluten I doesn't seem much like a risk to me or or even much much of a sacrifice but I was presented with a of light there might be a way out for me and anyone who's got Parkinson's would say please give me a way out and so I II was just a matter of just thank goodness I want to Shawna Shawna but of light on this for me I'm going to take this opportunity because frankly when you've got Parkinson's you really say I'll do anything I can to wriggle out of it so tell us about what happened next so you went on the low carbohydrate high-fat diet you started eliminating the toxins as far as sugars and carbohydrates go from your diet so did you feel a difference immediately and if not how long did it take for you to start feeling a difference well when we talk about difference it - there's two stages firstly I suddenly felt more energized but there was no no no no material change to my Parkinson's symptoms but I did feel better and I felt you know I just felt better perhaps it's worth explaining what the high fat low carb diet means it means I just kick out all sugars all gluten so all breads pastries cookies everything that that goes out the diet and sugars well that's pretty obvious so breakfast cereals so all those healthy breakfast cereals that have been advertised I used to have a kind of mutilating was actually packed full of sugar so that went as well and was replaced by things like berries and probiotic yogurt and like you know things like sandwiches and all those kind of things went and we replaced with more wholesome food less and that's it really is as simple as that and the change to me was I started feeling better physically and that took about six months and the first manifestation of what I thought why I really am on to something was when the the most disabling for symptom I had which is my back rigidity which really had left me confined to a chair for most of the day unable to really do even simple tasks like washing the dishes that disappeared and then I really really knew I'd I was on to something yeah but I was just part of of what that research told me because I went much much much further than that mm-hmm so let me back up just a little bit and can you tell us why you were physically before you started on this diet as far as what were your main symptoms that you are experiencing and you know what were your main limitations I guess before what I always been a highly active person golfer cyclist Walker enjoyed the outdoors and that had been snatched away by the biggest disabled facility with disabling symptom was my rigidity that was the bankruptcy I used to feel as either a golf ball someone who shoved inside the thigh of my right thigh I wasn't able to write of course by hand I could write even write my name he would shrink and start with one big letter and name would shrink into nothing in space of an inch across the page I lost the functionality of my right hand so I was really typing with my left hand I was at reasons why I was doing these things but I was able to type early type with my life left hand my right hand wasn't really usable and the biggest fear and the biggest scary thing I had was when I started he wanted to cross a road and I wasn't able to do that there was something holding me back and I was anxious and that's what I think that's probably the thing that fitted that I was most fearful sim tired I thought something is really amiss here and those those are some of the symptoms I had I mean I've got a softer voice I still have a softer voice and I always had people said to me used to say to me why you look so grim why you you unhappy when I feel gray but of course the face doesn't show and I figure this and other symptoms but you know the funny thing is once they passed as they are now you kind of forget I have to make a list of what I actually had and it's in is quite a long list as well so after six months you started to notice the rigidity started to lessen up and then as you're going I'm assuming you're still researching you're still adding to your your depth of knowledge about the brain and lifestyle so at six months you're starting to gain some momentum what are you adding anything at this point or are you pretty stable as far as what you're experimenting with right well I back let me back up a little bit further than that when I started cause when I open that Pandora's box of research that the diet was the first bit then I started him further research started discovering nutritional deficiencies so typically there were studies that showed that typically the Parkinson's person was deficient in vitamin B or vitamin C or vitamin and certainly vitamin D and then would likely be highly inflammatory in their body and in their brain which means they had an imbalance between your omega-3 and omega-6 so I would supplement so I started supplementing with all these these vitamins so that was also part of the program and as time went past life animal so I slowly added more I guess I'd probably taken about 14 different vitamins right now so it's six months the rigid the pain went from my rigidity my back but that meant I was able to rise from a chair and become mobile and when you become mobile as I starting to being able to walk oh and I didn't add of course my foot dragged and I used to not a shuffle but more of a lunge when I walked so that but that that that my walking improved dramatically and and so I symptoms gradually reduced so by nine months I felt comfortable about reducing my levodopa medication and I noticed no change in my eye circumstances or a continued improvement as I carried on pretty much that was that was it with that with the diet and the supplements that by 12 months and that was November 2014 I got the day HTMI memory 30th of November I stopped taking Parkinson's vacation entirely and since that date so that's 18 months 18 months now I've been medication free and I can't say and I've got better and better and better although since then November than 14 November 14 there's a lot as more things I've added and learned and that's what I continue to do okay such a great story of just continued perseverance I think a lot of people tend to think if it takes more than a week or two I might not be motivated to continue on and so at 12 months you made a decision to write your ebook is that correct yeah well you know I've never seen anything anyone writing about this of course they see the research but that's gets a bit bit difficult for people to reach out to so I thought well I'm going to tell my story I felt so excited at that stage about what had happened to me I really wanted to show it with others so I I wrote my ebook and which I published on the on the web and may have made available for our website and then started a Facebook page to draw people to it because that's really you don't reach people through websites now you reach them through Facebook so I started a Facebook page and ready to start sharing this information you can do something you know you haven't got to go and suffer in silence there are things you can do that can change your Parkinson's destiny and change to change the path of your life and so that's what I started doing I started that just every year ago okay so the website was kind of to just spread the message of hope for people to just understand that there's something out there that could be different than what they're thinking that their future might hold well yeah because it's a different message which is it's incurable it's degenerative you take the the medication which doesn't really hold back it maybe have some effects on some senses never changed of course as doing nothing which I which bridge the diet and the supposed which is start addressing the cause you know what is causing Parkinson's if you don't fix the cause but all you're doing is plugging the holes then is to carry on and get worse so he's really spreading that message that there is something you can do it has an origin and do something to address that origin and you can do something to change your Parkinson's destiny and that's really what this has all been about but I should say that's August sorry November nat 2014 is only the very start because I thought I knew a lot then from what I knew then was but I didn't know I knew I knew then what I didn't know I didn't know I didn't know and that has expanded all my knowledge as expanded greatly since then they're eliminating more toxins from the body people don't understand that the regular toothpaste they buy is full of toxins in the fastest way to get something from you to the brain is to put it on the tongue and that's toothpaste so I have organic toothpaste I have organic I'm shower gel organic deodorant shampoo every night I try to eliminate as many toxins as I can from my body and then having felt really better I started investigating exercise and that has improved a huge this helped me in the last year that has made a huge difference because I had a really quite a pronounced tremor and I what you'd call a really heavy are and what I was and I figured if I started building the strength because my muscles had all wasted away and my muscle mass was very very limited so through going to the gym and working under a personal trainer for three three days a week that has improved greatly and the stronger i've got so my use of my right arms increased and the tremors were reduced and i've helped oh i you know my mobility my abilities Reisman for get down on the floor and play with my grandchildren and all those kind of things that's changed immensely did your physical or did your personal trainer know much about Parkinson's before you started he knew nothing how did you go about learning together about Parkinson's and exercise we're figuring it out as we go along and this is partly why I'm excited to be here because I'm starting to see what you're doing here we need to tap into this this is what we really need to learn because I think we're as much much further we can go by understanding what you do and what you're accomplishing because I've seen some of the before-and-afters of what you've done with your clients and I'm thinking we need that and we need to share that and start showing people look you know this is as part of this is as good as medication is exercise and I would argue equally as important and of course I am biased because I'm a physical therapist but the beauty about exercise is everyone at some level can participate in that and it's a lot less daunting to say let's stand up and do five repetitions and you know so I think exercise can be a powerful key that really unlocks that whole lifestyle change but we can get more into that a little bit later but your you mentioned your personal trainers learning as he goes so what have you found the most helpful from what you guys do together is it weight training is it the cardiovascular what component of exercise do you really feel like is unlocked your ability to move working on flexibility in a movement first of all strength building because I just feel so much more empowered by opinion as though everything's back to getting back to where it should be the court learning I didn't even understand building core strength and what that does for my ability to move and maneuver and now now it's I've got fitter because when I started I thought I was starting from a good place but now I realize where I am now I was able to do maybe with two or three repetitions two or three minutes of exercise now it's like five 15 20 25 minutes of really sustained exercise which means you've now introduced a real kind of dynamic routines so it's really quite um energized and energetic exercise which leaves me feeling really energized and even better so so it sounds like you've had a pretty good and positive trajectory through this whole experience you've started on the diet you got good results you started on moving more you added a personal aura that's a goal personally you added a personal trainer so did you ever reach any setbacks or did you no life ever get in the way to the point where it wasn't all positively uphill did you run into even just any small barriers like you know I know it doesn't sound like you ever lost your motivation but you know a lot of people run into things that life life kind of gets in the way sometimes so I am curious as to how setbacks with a setback there's this time not would put me off the rails yeah I'm the kind of person I when I started out I said if I saw a of light I was going to take it so really nothing has ever deflected me from this as tasks and you know and when you're motivated when you start seeing things get better then you don't want to go back so nothing would get in the way and I'm very fortunate I've got a very supportive wife who's back to me the whole way works with me on the diet and when we're out and about we always make sure reaching the right food that we never never derailed from the right course but you know I suffered a financial meltdown with business in the early 1990s and when you face that and you come out of that then that gives you the strength to take on anything and I've always believed it was something you know parker's when I saw that that of light that that opening that partners is was something that I would wriggle out with it's not gone I still have it but I lived well with it and it plays no real meaningful impact in my life I'm kind of hyped up a little bit now sand my thumbs wailing away but really I'm gonna check that isn't going to change my life so no and the more and that when you start seeing things having and other people say the same things because other people are now pursuing this this agenda this diet and writing to me how they may saying how much they've recovered that you never go back the part of the price of going back is too high and the price of going forward is so great that you keep your eye on the goal talk about the prize a little bit more what are you able to do now that you never thought you'd be able to do again before you started this journey the biggest prize of all is better simply my granddaughter and play on the floor I mean let me give you an example we she's she's two and a half when we taken her out and we taken a little bit further out down along the beach then we should have done and she was tired and she needed to be carried back and I couldn't have picked her up a the year ago or two years ago now I was able to pick her up this is a two and a half year old girl and carrier several hundred yards home now that to me that is the prize and I've heard it said before by other Parkinson's you know motivator is to play with your grandchildren be be a regular grandparent rather than someone who's just kind of sat in the chair and who doesn't play a part and that's just a symptomatic of everything I do everything I want to do now I travel I come to Austin you know I get off a plane I've got travel around for the whole week and I go back and I'm unaffected I hope people don't know how you do it I said but I don't that I don't feel as I have Parkinsons just some minor symptoms that's so beautiful so how have people responded on the website you've made the website you've written the e-book what it has been their response well we've I guess the the best the better you measure responses on our Facebook page we now have 12,000 followers I still think we are a long way to go but that's the measure and of course nothing is more gratifying than to me and someone right out of the blue to say you have changed our lives because my ends usually the wife of the person with Parkinson's or the partner write in and say you know he is now able to get around and do things he wasn't doing or maybe from the very early stage you've enabled me to get hold of my Parkinson's before we get of me and that is really really gratifying and that's a real reward but is much much more we want to do we've only you know I've learned what I've learned now I want to start for example let me take the example of myself with supplements I've self medicated if you want to put it that way and kind of guess the dosages I need to take where I'm here in Austin because I can't find anyone in the UK that looks at it in this way but I'm here in Austin to start meeting or to meet with with neurologists and doctors of integrative medicine to start saying these are the doses you need to take and I want to encourage other people to say you know it's very daunting to self medicate is to actually get under the get under the wing of a doctor that can guide you in the right way so we know we're on the right track now we need to start adding some polish and some veneer to this so that it's not like a half-hearted effort it is a comput ohta LeFort to get things right so in your research and in your experience with your community what would you say to the people who are pretty far along in their diagnosis they have they're reaching the kind of advanced stages of their Parkinson's symptoms well that's something I'll prickly for it pretty quickly became aware of once I started putting once the Facebook page was was up and started publicizing because people were then writing me and then I started became personally acquainted with people with pretty advanced symptoms and they want to find a way out too but they're kind of in the grip of this medication and they want to get well but the come and it is so limiting on me and so then I started researching to my research then took started taking me into alternative therapies now there's one that I think the virtual from America you would be this is quite a very innovative place for this kind of thing I came across them the minute I remember the amino acid therapy which is a levodopa replacement sorry a dopamine replacement therapy using the mucuna pruriens plant or levodopa from there and then people summer I read a lady I remember her name but I won't say it now said I am now recovered and I thought wow so I pursued I pursued that and there's right there and then I read about low dose naltrexone but you know the thing that's missing with all these there's lots of people saying I've got well we never hear the people that haven't recovered from it so what I see us doing now is start collecting information from all these people on their experiences what symptoms it changes what it the good experiences and the bad experiences and so we can start there's a body of evidence that you can look at so that you can make an informed decision yes I can do that I mean I've got a friend who knows through through the fight Parkinson's who's adopted the amino acid therapy within three days he threw away his walking stick now that is an exceptional story he builds model boats large model boats with matchsticks so you imagine how he was affected by stir and that was over for him he's now bet building model boats so that's an incredible story in that home but that's one story what we need to start collecting that body of evidence so people say with confidence that's something I can do and so I see us moving building application app that enables people to input and we start collecting to this resource that they can start people start making decisions informed decisions or perhaps going to their doctor and say I would like to pursue this therapy and there are more therapies being coming my way than and I've got time to research at the moment but what we need to do is is turn that from someone saying this work for me to this will work for who it will work for with some confidence so I put this you know that's that's one piece there's a fraction we need is that there's a we're a modest outfit in the moment but we need to add a lot lot more information rather than just one of hope now go and find it yourself yeah well that's one thing that I love about what you're doing is I think it's tempting for people and you've seen you know people out there who it's said well this this collection of things worked for me and so now everyone needs to do this specific thing and the thing that I really appreciate about what you're doing with fight Parkinson's org is you're not saying everyone should do exactly what I did instead you're saying there are answers out there let's all do this together and I think that that's really one of the most beautiful things about what you're doing in your effort is going towards is because it's very collective minded and it's really a support system and to help people inform themselves because that's what really drives change when people take take action and empower themselves with knowledge and then go from there so I really appreciate what you're doing there and I think I would just finish by asking you what is your definition of Parkinson's recovery oh yeah well you're my deficient um I would say living well if you can live well with Parkinson's and it doesn't define your life you know other things define your life that's what I would say a Parkinson's recovery can be wonderful thank you so much Colin this has been a real pleasure my pleasure - thank you very much Sarah you

Channel: Invigorate Physical Therapy and Wellness

Views: 267,029

Keywords: Parkinson's Disease, Fight-Parkinsons.org, Invigorate Physical Therapy and Wellness, Treatment for Parkinson's Disease, Natural Approach to Parkinson's, Parkinson's supplements, Parkinson's exercise, Cure for Parkinson's Disease, Colin Potter Parkinson's, Parkinson's Disease symptoms, reverse parkinsons

Id: qDG6zG-xnx4

Length: 32min 25sec (1945 seconds)

Published: Wed May 11 2016