The following series of Blog posts come from Jay Whiteside in Toronto, Canada where he keeps in touch with family and friends in a series of newsletters he’s named as ‘What’s Shaking’.  Jay has edited highlights from ‘What’s Shaking’ for us to hear firsthand how he is managing his Parkinson’s symptoms which were first discovered over ten years ago. He kindly gave me permission to post seven of his episodes here.

Robert Rodgers PhD
Founder 2004
Parkinsons Recovery

Episode 2: My Five Step Program

Starting with an upbeat mindset, my What’s Shaking Five-Step program includes excellent nutrition, 15-plus hours physical fitness training every week, Parkinson’s-targeted physio, and not automatically adding more prescription drugs (my pharma load is 25% less than two years ago). 

There’s a lot of learning in each of these steps (and lots of trial by error too) but with this plan I continue to see progress.

I reject the notion that I’m retired. I have a career’s worth of work ahead of me. Learning about myself. Learning about medicine and the warren of health care approaches. Continuous measured improvement of my five-steps. Learning and practicing and refining healing modalities – both conventional and natural, even mystical. Always moving forward. And seeking opportunities where my direct experience may benefit others, and vice versa. Sharing the lessons learned from this peculiar gift.

The work starts with getting in my own face…How healthy do I want to be? 

If on the one-to-ten scale it’s a number I can be proud of, then I need a big  vision. “Training” must be a total lifeforce devotion, not a twice a day lifestyle diversion. All-in commitment vs. sort-of miscellany.