Key points from today’s guests:

John Reinhart, living with Parkinson’s Disease

• At age 63, John noticed a twitching in his thumb.
• His other symptoms were a loss of smell, fatigue and irritability.
• Last year, six years after he was first diagnosed, he underwent a procedure to implant a deep brain stimulator (DBS) into his head that provides a signal that alleviates the tremors.
• He can control the intensity with a remote control and when he demonstrated it by turning in off, the tremors in his right hand began immediately until he turned the DBS back on.
• John is also part of a Rock Steady boxing club, which provides him with exercise and a support group for others with Parkinson’s.
• He is able to travel and do activities with his grandchildren that he thought he would be unable to do once he was diagnosed.
• He said it is important for his grandchildren to know that he is in control of Parkinson’s and it is not in control of him.

Dr. Kevin Au, movement disorder specialist, The University of Kansas Health System

• Parkinson's is a neurodegenerative condition, meaning that the brain cells gradually over time are degenerating.
• The brain cells in the midbrain that produce dopamine are dying off and as a neurotransmitter, it's involved in a lot of different things.
• It is really important in motor aspects and control of your body parts, your hands, and your thumbs. And if you don't have that, then you can have the symptoms of Parkinson's disease which are slowness, stiffness, and tremor.
• These are the most visible symptoms people pick up on the most but people say the motor symptoms are actually the tip of the iceberg. People can have multiple symptoms -- a loss of their sense of smell and taste that can be altered even years before they start having a tremor, their sleep can be affected, it cause you to act out your dreams at night, you can have mood difficulties, including depression, anxiety and apathy, and also your cognition can be impacted.
• How do we slow down the rate of Parkinson's? I think exercise is the number one thing that we recommend at this point -- high intensity aerobic exercise as well as strength training and also flexibility and stretching exercises.
• Right now, we don't yet have widely available medications that slow down the progression.
• In addition to DBS, there's also another treatment called focused ultrasound, which focuses thousands of ultrasound waves in one spot on the brain -- the same spot of the brain that we put the DBS electrode in.
• As far as testing for the disease, the Michael J. Fox Foundation is working hard on this, looking at it in the skin as well as the spinal fluid. Just in the past couple of years, we can take three small punch biopsies -- one in the back of the neck, and then two in the leg -- and the visual studies that had a 95 percent accuracy of typing and determining that it's Parkinson's disease.
• The Parkinson’s Foundation Fundraiser Walk is this Saturday – MovingDayWalk.org.

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control, The University of Kansas Health System

• The hospital COVID count for this week is at three patients, which is a decrease from eight patients last week.
• For the week of April 13, it was the lowest week of COVID hospitalizations nationwide since last July. Overall COVID-related deaths nationally for the week of April 13 were under 250 deaths for that week.
• Starting April 30, hospitals will no longer need to report COVID cases to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
• We've gotten out of respiratory viral season, but we are now in tickborne and mosquito season.
• If you're going to be outdoors, take preventive measures. If you are working or walking in the brush, wear long clothes, do tick checks, and most importantly, wear bug spray. Those things will help protect you from tick borne and mosquito borne illness.

Tuesday, April 23 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. If you fall and hit your head, you may not realize you have a small brain bleed. But it could be life threatening. You’ll meet a woman who underwent a revolutionary procedure to fix such a bleed.

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