Hi! David:
    I am currently taking ayurvedic medication from Dr. Paneri for the past
three months.

    In my experience, I am finding a lot of relief.  I visited Dr. Paneri's
clinic in Ahmedabad India with my son, who is an MD practicing in Canada.
I was impressed by the claims, although I did not have any means of
verifying his statements nor any special reason to suspect his sincerity.
    I had the choice of not-believing and rejecting it or try it to find out
the truth.  I opted for the second choice.  I know a couple of other people
are also trying ayurvedic herbs from Dr. Paneri & other North American
sources.  The reason I did not want to try Nonrth Amer. sources was that I
think they mix sinemet in their concoction.  My reason for choosing
ayurvedic herbs is to avoid sinemet, with which so many people  in our forum
seem to have problems.
    I would like you to read my experience carefully and also talk to  other
people's experience with ayurveda before you take any further action.  It is
important for me to give you the correct information so that I would not
influence you one way or the other, so that you would make a conscious
decision based on your own judgment.

    I am 69 years old male from India living in North America for almost 40
years.   I am a retired professor.  I have been having symptoms of PD and ET
from my teenage without realizing it.  In 1998, I had the major symptom of
speech impediment. My action tremor got worse by 1999 and was spreading from
my right hand to my right leg.  I have seen so far a total of six neuros.
Three of them said I have both symptoms of PD and ET.  Two of them said I
have only ET and not PD!  The latest one said that I have both symptoms of
PD and ET, but the symptoms were so mild he did not want to start me on any
medication! (I thought that was a very strange verdict.  However, by this
time, I was one month into my ayurvedic medicine!).

    My father (died in his 90s after a very active life) had ET, which got
very visible in his late years.  Myself and three of my five brothers have
ET.  They don't have any symptoms of PD, like I do.

    The following are my symptoms of PD, albeight I am still fully
functional (probably due to ayurveda?).
    I had a mild facial mask since I was 30 years old.
    I use to experience very stiff right shoulder an pain in myright arm for
the past 10 years or so.
    In 1999, I felt very week and tired the whole day and could not get up
from my car seat.  (So I went and baught a very epenpsive car with an
elevated leather seat, without realizing the true problem).
    Soon, I noticed I was drooling too much and woke up several times from
my sleep because of that.
    I also developed a skin condition called sebarrheic dermatitis, an
incurable condition sometimes associated with PD.
    I also developed oily face, which was getting worse.
    My speech impediment was getting worse and my voice was going down.
    In March 2000, I began to experience stiff legs and pain in my calf
muscles, the beginnings of bradykinesia.
    In August 2000, I began feeling the pain in my toes and curving and
freezing of my legs (dystonia?).
    I was well underway developing for postural instability.  Often, I also
felt dystonia in both of my legs.
    But, I still did not develop visible symptoms of resting tremor or
micrographia, two important signs of PD.
    I should say my symptoms of PD were developing very slowly through
several decades, but rapidly deteriorating after 65, relative to my younger
days.

My symptoms of ET:
    Action tremor since I was a teen ager.
    In 1999, action tremor spread to my right leg and I was beginning to
feel the same thing in my left leg.
    In 2001, my signature was very inconsistant and I cannot even now
reproduce my signature due to violent action tremor.
    By the end of 2002, I could not reproduce even the first few letters of
my signature.
    Action tremor will disappear if I take alchoholic drinks.

In Nov, 2002, I visited Dr. Paneri in Ahmedaba and decided to try his
medication, totally discouraged by the reportedly bad side effects of
prescrioption drugs including sinemet and mirapex (I have both of them in my
closet).  But, even before I saw Dr. Paneri, I became a believer in
anti-oxidents (Oral glutathione, lipoic acid), n-acetyl cysteine,  Vit.B12
and E, folic acid, multivitamins, and take these supplements daily.  In Oct
2002,  I added Co E Q10 to my arsenel.  I also make sure I eat a lot of blue
berries fresh or frozen, straw berries, and most importantly fresh spinach
sald, since  all these three have protective effect on neurons. I also add a
pinch of turmeric in my green tea every day.  All these supplements do help
me to some extent and keep my energy level up.

    I started taking ayurvedic medicine from Dr. Paneriin Dec 2002.  Due to
my extensive travel during the past three months, I was not able to take the
full complement of his medicine. I could still manage to take at least one
dose per day for almost a month or two.
    I noticed my energy level returned back to what was about 5 years ago.
This was my first sign of improvement.  I began to sleep very well for
atleast 7 hr without any problem.   I started to have regular bowel
movements too.
    Starting about a month ago, I started taking two doses as per the
recommendations. A week after that I began unmistakable improvement in my
postural instability and in bradykinesia.  For the past 7 weeks, my
itchyness due to sebarrheic dermatitis has completely disappeared (I am
keeping my fingers crossed)!  Now a days, I  can work in my computer for 6
hrs a day without getting tired or developing pain in my shoulder. I do not
have any more problems with my curling toes.   I rarely experience a mild
form of dystonia now a days.
Only then, I began congratulating myself for making my choice towards
ayurvedic medicine.   I have two sons and both are MD, FRCPS. They and all
my friends tell me that I look better.   Unfortunately, I do not know how to
quantitatively express my improvement or if the improvements that I am
currently experiencing will continue in the long run.

    I still have a long way to go before I can claim I am cured.
        1. There is still some degree of postural instability to get rid of.
        2. Although my voice level has improved considerably, speech
impediment is still there.
        3. I still have a lot of difficulty in getting up.
        4. I have not yet seen any perceptible reduction in my action
tremor.
        5. I still wake up once or twice due to drooling, but this problem
is definitely not as bad as it used to be.
        6. I have not seen perceptible improvements in my handwrting.
        7. I still experience baddays and good days.  The only change is
that the bad days are not as bad as they had been about six months ago.

    However, if the rate of progress continues at the current pace, I feel I
shall be out of the woods in a year or so.  If what Dr. Paneri tells me is
true, once I get rid of all  my symptoms, I need not take any further
medication for the rest of my life.   At present, this is only my wishful
thinking. Only time will tell.

    We all know that PD is a designer disease.  I cannot guarantee what
works for me will work for every one else.  I know a lot of people do not
believe in anything but western medicine.  I do not have to prove anything
to anybody.   I do not have any financial benefit by making any positive
statements about ayurveda or Dr. Paneri.   The system of ayurvedic medicine
is very ancient and comes from thousands of years of knowledge gained from
experience.   It makes sense to strongly suspect somebody's claim in such a
situation like PD, where the western system of double blind trial has failed
to cure this miserable disease.

    All I can tell you my personal experience, if it was good or bad.  So
far, I do not have any reason to disontinue my medication.

    I strongly recommend you to study the available info, talk to different
PWPs who took ayurvedic medicine, before you decide for  or against this
approach.
    I know a lot of people will hate to hear this from me.  Somebody else
may have a different experience, ethier worse or better.  I do not recommend
nor discourage any body from trying ayurvedic medicine.  I am simply stating
my experience so far.  I shall hopefully report my experience with ayurveda
after about six months or so.  If I am convinced that I have beaten this
trecherous disease or not, I shall file another detailed report for the
benefit of the members of this forum.  If my experience turns out to be
positive, I might also quit from this forum.

    Raj
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