Earlier this month, the International RBD Study Group published its findings that a certain class of sleep disorder is strongly linked to the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life. As the group’s name implies, the disorder is known as RBD – REM sleep behaviour disorder, which causes you act out your dreams to sometimes fatal consequences for your sleep partner. All the people in the study suffered from this disorder, and after a 12 year followup, they were found to have a high chance of developing Parkinson’s or dementia.
It may not sound like it, but this is actually good news. By the time most people are usually diagnosed with Parkinson’s, the neurodegenerative disease has already done irreversible damage to their brain. Researchers have spent years looking for a reliable early warning sign, so that treatments can become prevention. They might have just found it in RBD.
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Just past lunchtime one warm Tuesday last spring, as I walked through my neighborhood to the local Indian restaurant for samosas, I saw a big yard sale going on. I’ve long been a fan of a good rummage sale—that hunt for something tired and old to dust off and love anew. From a distance I could see the usual household bits and bops, some well-used furniture, and piles of clothes and bedding spread over half a block of sidewalk and trampled grass. Odds and ends seemed to have toppled down the steps of the townhouse hosting the event—it was a remarkably disorganized set up. People poked around, others loaded items into trunks and back seats of hastily parked cars as drivers waited, engines running.