<H1>Go back to your corner. One, two, three.......</H1>

I think I fell down the basement stairs about 30 minutes ago. I remember feeling a little unsure of myself and the next thing I remember I was sitting at the computer looking at the screen and being uncertain of what to do next. Couple that with an open gash on my head and every muscle in my upper body in spasm and I have to conclude I took a header down those stairs. I must have been "out" for a second or two or more because I have a total blank about everything that happened during the time before I found myself at the computer.

Do Head Injuries Cause PD?

I have always wondered about this. In my youth, I suffered three or four concussions, minor ones in football,hockey and boxing. Did they cause my brain to start losing dopomine?

Dr. Barbara Changizi, a neurologist in Ohio, treated Muhammad Ali, and she noted that head injuries likely contribute to PD. She said:

Still, head trauma has also been linked with Parkinson's disease. In a 2013 review study, researchers found that people with head trauma that resulted in a concussion were 57 percent more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, than people who never experienced such head trauma.

Head injuries can cause inflammation in the brain, which may lead to changes in cells and brain structures that contribute to Parkinson's, Changizi said.

And injuries that specifically damage the part of the brain that contains dopamine-producing cells, called the substantia nigra, can also lead to Parkinson's, Changizi said.

After Ali's death, some people asked on social media sites whether Ali could have also suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease found in athletes such as football players who have experienced repeated blows to the head.

But Changizi said, "Parkinson's disease would be enough to explain a lot of his symptoms."

So, who knows? Maybe the "fun" I had in my youth has come back to haunt me.

Now, I'd better do something about my bleeding forehead and while you wait, read this.

.

In 1996, Ali faced down those fears on one of the biggest stages of all, when he stepped out of the shadows to light the Olympic flame at the Atlanta Games.

The debilitating effect of Parkinson’s was now evident to everyone watching the opening ceremony. His arms shook violently, as did his upper body, moving many in the arena to tears as he struggled to overcome the physical effects of his condition to hold the torch aloft, before reaching down and lighting the cauldron. Janet Evans, the American swimmer who handed him the torch, said: “It was all about courage. It was written all around his body that he was not going to let [it] do him in. He was still the greatest.”

Ali’s subsequent public appearances became ever more poignant, as Parkinson’s continue to ravage his mind and body.

In October last year Ali, a shadow of his former self, appeared at a Sports Illustrated tribute to him at the Muhammad Ali Centre, in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. His last public appearance came in April, when - hunched over and wearing sunglasses - he attended the annual Celebrity Fight Night dinner in Phoenix, which raises funds for treatment of Parkinson's.

It was a tragic end to what had been a majestic life, but Ali appeared to acknowledge it would in part be one of his own making.

In 1975, speaking about those punishing fights with Foreman and Frazier, he said: “I once read something that said – ‘He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.’ Well, boxing is a risk and life is a gamble, and I got to take both."

(Patrick Sawer, senior reporter, The Telegraph)