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RE: Focal Dystonia.
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Viva Sabicas
Posts: 3
Joined: Apr. 27 2006
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 RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to sam dds)
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If you go to" Musicians With Focal Dystonia Bulletin Board," under the forum title: "Rubber Band," or my name: Richard Lewis, you will see how a lack of zinc in the diet may be the cause of focal dystonia. I have focal dystonia myself since I was 49. But at the age of 65 I increased my zinc intake along with vitamin B-6 on an empty stomach, and my focal dystonia in my left hand was lessened by over 50%. It seems that copper in the diet can bring on the focal dystonia and zinc seems to reduce the copper...Brass mouth pieces also have a lot of copper and trumpet players are getting the focal dystonia in their lips, which proves the zinc/copper connection....I also notice that if I do a lot of scales on the guitar, since I also play the flamenco guitar, and the piano, my left hand moves faster after about 20 minutes...You need to get the blood into the hand. Maybe the zinc is being directed there...I also notice that dark chocolate seems to help my playing as well...Dark chocolate seems to suppress the over firing of the brain's neurons as well as the amino acid Glycine, GABA, Taurine....they also can reduce the over firing of the brain's neurons which are short circuiting the 4th and 5th fingers of my left hand...The brain seems to be confused when the fingers are moving too fast...There is also a great article about how a guitarist overcame his focal dystonia by doing certain exercises. The title of the article is: What Every Guitarist Should Know: A Guide to the Prevention and Rehabilitation of Focal Hand Dystonia," by Jason W. Solomon....Every one who has focal dystonia in the hand should read this very important article..
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Date May 8 2013 22:16:44
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Blondie#2
Posts: 530
Joined: Sep. 14 2010
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to Viva Sabicas)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Viva Sabicas
It seems that copper in the diet can bring on the focal dystonia and zinc seems to reduce the copper...Brass mouth pieces also have a lot of copper and trumpet players are getting the focal dystonia in their lips, which proves the zinc/copper connection..
Umm.. no it doesn't. There is zero research to support your theory and actually the evidence in FD research proves the opposite - did you know which musicians are most at risk from focal dystonia, statistically?
It's pianists, and I'm having trouble seeing a 'copper poisoning' effect there, unless pianists are all playing the pedals barefoot these days.
Second most at risk group: guitarists. Now unless the copper is leeching through those silver windings and poisoning us, that knocks a hole in your theory too.
If copper poisoning was truly the cause of FD, then surely brass players would be the most affected?
Zinc pills and chocolate to cure FD? Sorry this really is just new age nonsense. Its an attempt to blame FD wholly on the environment, and toxins within it, and avoid taking any kind of responsibility for how we understand and use our own bodies. It also takes the new age path of treating ourselves through supplements, just like the guy who spammed the board earlier in the thread selling his snake oil miracle cure.
I wish you luck with your recovery, and I have to say the placebo effect can be incredibly powerful in curing/improving all kinds of ailments - just look at the people who buy homeopathic remedies. Belief is a powerful thing.
There have been some useful suggestions on that bulletin board you mention over the years, but equally lots of 'out there' wacky theories that individuals dream up by making tenuous connections to areas of science they really do not understand.
The Jason Solomon article you mention has some useful info for those not familiar with the condition - no mention of copper/zinc/chocolate I note. His route to recovery is all about careful retraining through increased awareness, ensuring variety in practice, avoiding tension etc which is mostly good advice.
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Date May 9 2013 8:05:41
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to Blondie#2)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Blondie#2
quote:
ORIGINAL: Viva Sabicas
It seems that copper in the diet can bring on the focal dystonia and zinc seems to reduce the copper...Brass mouth pieces also have a lot of copper and trumpet players are getting the focal dystonia in their lips, which proves the zinc/copper connection..
Umm.. no it doesn't. There is zero research to support your theory and actually the evidence in FD research proves the opposite - did you know which musicians are most at risk from focal dystonia, statistically?
It's pianists, and I'm having trouble seeing a 'copper poisoning' effect there, unless pianists are all playing the pedals barefoot these days.
Second most at risk group: guitarists. Now unless the copper is leeching through those silver windings and poisoning us, that knocks a hole in your theory too.
If copper poisoning was truly the cause of FD, then surely brass players would be the most affected?
Zinc pills and chocolate to cure FD? Sorry this really is just new age nonsense. Its an attempt to blame FD wholly on the environment, and toxins within it, and avoid taking any kind of responsibility for how we understand and use our own bodies. It also takes the new age path of treating ourselves through supplements, just like the guy who spammed the board earlier in the thread selling his snake oil miracle cure.
I wish you luck with your recovery, and I have to say the placebo effect can be incredibly powerful in curing/improving all kinds of ailments - just look at the people who buy homeopathic remedies. Belief is a powerful thing.
There have been some useful suggestions on that bulletin board you mention over the years, but equally lots of 'out there' wacky theories that individuals dream up by making tenuous connections to areas of science they really do not understand.
The Jason Solomon article you mention has some useful info for those not familiar with the condition - no mention of copper/zinc/chocolate I note. His route to recovery is all about careful retraining through increased awareness, ensuring variety in practice, avoiding tension etc which is mostly good advice.
Yay 
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Date May 9 2013 9:27:12
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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Blondie; word! 100% including placebo and homeopathy.
( Funny thing, the latter helped me personally after a hefty kick in the groin. The doc gave me a homeopathic pill and everything went down and returned to order. Though informed about baselessness of homeopathy and its hsitory, just telling myself like `the doc treated me´worked already.)
Interesting to me to learn that pianists are first with FD.
Because my individual case emerged from habitual engagement of extensors.
( resulting from:
# fingers starting position beyond poise / extended from get go.
# rectangular relation of fingers to strings, which requested ways for the longest finger to get around the string on retrun to starting posiition, by awkwardly engaging extending and sideways moving msucles.
# long term use of a workstations mouse with oversensible right button / constant lifting / extending of the m finger.)
My impression being that a starting movement from extension position ( hence resulting into neural over firing / blockade at the limits of the small extensor range ) of the fingers being specially prone to neural exhausting, resulting into synapsis merge in the cortex.
And piano is quite what could be suited for such tendency, when a player brings his hands into the horizontal to match the keyboard, while keeping the wrists too low however / angling them upwards.
That means pre-extension as starting position.
Ideal, whether with piano or guitar, is when the idle position is at poise. With nothing angled and the fingers slightly curled in accordance to the natural poise.
A picking / hitting of string / key then involving nothing other than a small flexor movement from finger base and after completition a "falling" back into idle by merely releasing / letting antagonists balance the finger position to idle.
Later on, as Erik suggested somewhere, active adding to the return to idle might be enhancing, but only reasonably dosed and timed, which will only be possible after antagonist ballancing has been firmly imprinted first.
I suggest to beware of overly enaged extensors chiefly, while watching for strain.
Who might feel tempted to give such focus a try for a little while ( or even just minutes) may afterwards feed back here about positive or negative effects observed.
Ruphus
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Date May 9 2013 10:28:14
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guitarbuddha
Posts: 2970
Joined: Jan. 4 2007
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ruphus
but only reasonably dosed and timed, which will only be possible after antagonist ballancing has been firmly imprinted first.
I suggest to beware of overly enaged extensors chiefly, while watching for strain.
Who might feel tempted to give such focus a try for a little while ( or even just minutes) may afterwards feed back here about positive or negative effects observed.
Ruphus
Firstly Ruphus I want to apologise for being brusque the other day, I was grumpy and insensitive. I hope we can agree not the pick up where we left off
Above I quoted three clauses from your last post.
I can report that paying close attention to strain ( in particular during warm-up) pays off, especially over the long term.
Where I would urge caution is in the first phrase about 'firmly imprinting'. This is where problems can arise. Remember the plate spinning analogy earlier ? Well imagine trying to 'firmly imprint' balancing the plate, with the idea of forgetting about it and going on to something else.
Of course the plate would fall off as soon as you stopped thinking about it. Now certainly with practice you would need to commit less and less of your conscious mind to it. But it would always need just a little part of your attention. And course the really important thing is that you always need to keep moving and adjusting (which is why I chose that plate spinning analogy), as soon as you get it 'right' the system stiffens up.
Alexander Technique is really all about that. The plate is your head and the pole is your whole body. There is no right or wrong position, you just gotta keep things spinning, as soon as you stiffen up the plate falls. It is the opposite of posture in a way.
I believe that 'firmly ingraining' is what leads to problems like FD and the neuro sicence bears this out. I truly believe that the route to improved body use is through CONTINUOUS awareness and CONTINUOUS discovery. Just trying for few minutes is like just looking at the road for a few minutes whilst driving.
Now I can't know for sure precisely what you meant by 'firmly ingraining'. But it is good to look for clues in our use of language which help to identify where we are getting stuck .
(This certainly applies to me as we got stuck the other day because of my lack of care in the use of language. Again I apologise and I take responsibility for the negative escalation.)
Please be aware that I am present in this thread only to try and help and also to warn away from cul-de-sacs where I have had direct experience.
I do not deal well with contradiction well and have a tendancy towards pomposity. Please be assured that I have nothing but the kindest intentions and that, although what I say may seem a bit weird, I am very happily on the other side of RSI difficulties.
If what I say seems to contradict a belief that you hold earnestly then that may actually be the start of the unlocking process. In particular if it makes you angry, because this is often a harbinger of deep learning.
D.
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Date May 9 2013 11:39:11
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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No worries, GB,
I wasn´t that offended, but your care is certainly appreciated.
I think if you had seen of my posts in former threads you might had realized that the wholy and the particular belong to the same thing.
And possibly indeed some language items might have been cleared. Like "posture"* for instance wich mustn´t mean to be static at all and basically deals with center and lever. ( * Maybe you have been thinking of "posing" like models for photography do?)
In terms of what I mean with imprints, these don´t mean somethings static either, but a supporting base for all kinds of demands.
To illustrate we need to take into consideration that there is the vegetative nervous system and the somatic one. Of both of which sections can be trained to become part of the other.
And there are functions that are controlled alternatingly by both nervous systems.
Like breath for instance.
As you certainly know todays individuals in given civilisations often do not breath very efficiently on "default modus" ( which is running on "automatic", but mustn´t be natural in the same time ), and one can consciously ( somatically) train the breathing for higher efficiency. And if you train only regularly / often enough the improved breathing will become habitual and "default" / vegetative.
Once the breathing has been `tweaked back to natural´ it can serve as a base to improve further physical ( and mental) conditions.
Similar when I speak of imprinting. Like above, meant is re-repogramming of bad habits.
In the above posts example, hence learning the feeling of least-effort and training regularly with it until a clean undisturbed execution may have become normal.
Then, when firm, other techniques will conseuqently be much easier to learn or to correct as well.
I am not sure whether I agree with on one of your points however.
Focus will be needed during exploration and practising, and later every other time for check / refreshing, but shouldn´t be requirred all the time.
Hopefully, one shall reach to where effortless playing may be happening while your thoughts being with the music, not the execution.
As a Wing Tsun man, I can say that there you learn chi sao for it to become fully involuntary. ( When extremely trained I would even wake up from explosively "fighting away" and controlling the blanket when it would twine around me too firmly, hehehe. - And once, while I was sleeping, a gril friend after a movement of her was only safed from harm due to immediate control of the situation. With the body "thinking" faster than oneself.)
I understand the goal of all high art being to achieve a certain effect through least efforts, and to come to executing with as little conscious action as possible. ( Which again and naturally takes jsut the more conscious training meticulously / large scaled beforehand.)
So, if you want: For care-free level one needs extra care on the way to there.
And vice versa:
The less ergonomically / physiologically intelligent the focus with practising beforehand, the more large-scale / conscious engagement it wil thus be needing to execute.
I think.
Ruphus
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Date May 9 2013 16:24:21
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Blondie#2
Posts: 530
Joined: Sep. 14 2010
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to Viva Sabicas)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Viva Sabicas
The zinc cure works not only for me, but for many others. If you had checked out the comments at the "Musicians With Focal Dystonia Bulletin Board," under my name: Richard Lewis, you would have had all the proof of how zinc helped many other sufferers.
I've already read it but i went back to see - three people who believe it helped does not equate to proof. Plenty of people believe the world is flat, that does not provide proof the world is flat.
Have a look at 'placebo' on wikipedia. If you are experiencing improvements, great, but attributing it to zinc and chocolate is a bit like saying eating apples will improve your golf swing.
quote:
.You should also read an article on copper toxicity by Dr. Lawrence Wilson MD called: "Copper Toxicity Syndrome." It is a ten page article which covers all the affects of copper on the body.......
I did, it's a cracker. Too much copper, it seems, can be blamed for just about every ailment under the sun. Has this stuff been published in a proper journal and peer reviewed?
First thing I noted was that chocolate is high in copper, which seems to contradict what you said earlier? You said chocolate helps your playing yet you are promoting the theory that too much copper causes FD?
The article is certainly interesting:
(quote) "Copper and world violence. Copper tends to enhance all the emotions, so violence can occur far more in those with copper excess – a common problem today in many parts of the world.
America is actually better in this regard because we can afford more beef and other meats. These foods are among the highest foods in zinc that balances copper in the body. Nations that cannot afford much meat may have worse copper imbalance"
So there you go, America is far less violent (!) than other countries because Americans eat loads of meat.
Here's another one, very topical for the UK:
'Vaccination and the use of prescription drugs can aggravate a child's copper imbalance, usually by depleting the zinc level. Copper imbalance in children is associated with delayed development, attention deficit disorder, anti-social and hyperactive behavior, autism, learning difficulties and infections such as ear infections.'
So there you go, don't get your kids innoculated. This is just the kind of crap that caused the current measles epidemic in Swansea and elsewhere in the UK.
'While many factors influence our attitudes and values, the rise in tissue copper levels in both men and women in the past fifty years parallels renewed interest in women’s issues, in religious and intuitive knowledge, and other “new age” and other movements. Copper may promote or encourage these interests and activities by causing mild tissue catabolism that breaks down old tissues in the body, thus making way for the development of other types of tissues in the body. This sounds very vague, but apparently copper has this type of effect..'
This guy's a doctor? 'This sounds very vague.. but apparently...'
Full article is here in case anyone else wants a look:
http://drlwilson.com/articles/copper_toxicity_syndrome.htm
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Date May 12 2013 13:35:23
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Elie
Posts: 1837
Joined: Apr. 10 2010
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RE: Focal Dystonia. (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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many thanks for your comments guys.
some interesting facts from the same post :
Bob Hinz : A few thoughts/theories about this (it is the way I would describe the "disappearance," as you describe it, in my own experience): 1. Progress is so slow that it is hard to notice improvement on a day to day or week to week basis; 2. Habituation; we "acclimate" to any improvement wherein it becomes a "new normal." It just seems the same. Also, if our movements are still affected, it's easy to think that there is no improvement since, perhaps, we're comparing our current ability with what we could do before the disorder began, when things were perfectly normal. I do that all the time!; 3) improvement is often like 10 steps forward then 9 steps backward, so comparisons and measurements of progress can be difficult. If you are having a bad day, it is easy to think you did it better 3 months ago, because you had a really good day back then. For me, I try to compare the best this month with the best six months ago, and the worst this month with the worst six months ago. That seems to be a better measure for comparison. I don't know if any of this is true, but it is a way to describe what I do and how I perceive what is happening to me.
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Date May 13 2013 18:03:21
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