Before Parkinson’s disease lays waste to the body, it begins to rob people of their voice.

It may be subtle at first… but researchers believe they can use that to help detect the disease earlier than ever.

A team of scientists at the University of Haifa in Israel has developed a voice analysis program that can spot the differences between normal speech, and the speech of people who are suffering from Parkinson’s disease – even if they don’t know it yet themselves.

Not only that, but the program can track the changes and show whether the disease is worsening or – on a more positive note – treatment is working, according to the study published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

What’s especially encouraging about the test is that it involves no poking, no prodding and no scans or X-rays. At a time when people – especially seniors – are zapped with enough radiation to power small reactors and forced to give enough blood to feed a village of vampires, that’s terrific news.

Parkinson’s, of course, does far worse than ruin your speaking voice. And while those altered speech patterns may offer an early clue, they’re not the only warning sign.

There are others – and like the speech patterns, they could be subtle at first. But pay attention to them, because the key to slowing this disease is spotting it before the bigger symptoms appear, like the notorious whole-body tremors.

One of those warning signs may be the loss of smell. In fact, since 90 percent of Parkinson’s patients lose some of their sense of smell, researchers believe a simple scent test could also help sniff out this dreaded disease.

If you or anyone you love is at risk for Parkinson’s or has any of the warning signs, don’t delay – but don’t jump on the drug train either. Many of the meds used to treat this condition are dangerous and addictive.

Dr. Jonathan Wright has written extensively about natural treatments for Parkinson’s disease, including coenzyme Q10 and vitamin B2. You can learn more by visiting his Web site and searching the archives.

Also remember that many patients treated for Parkinson’s disease are actually suffering from something else entirely, from benign and treatable tumors to drug reactions.

A skilled natural doctor can make the right diagnosis and help you find a safe treatment that will keep you healthy without doing even more damage to your body and mind.

You’ve heard me tell you to watch what you put into your body.

But what you put into your body isn’t just limited to what you eat and drink. Many of the toxins we’re exposed to gain entry through our environment.

And some environments are more hazardous than others.

A new study shows that regular on-the-job exposure to pesticides increases your risk for Parkinson’s disease.

The study, published in June in the Annals of Neurology, doesn’t identify the cause of Parkinson’s so much as a risk factor that we all need to be aware of – especially those of us who work around these chemicals.

French researchers followed 800 adults, some with Parkinson’s disease and somewithout, who worked on farms and in the course of their jobs were exposed to fungicides, herbicides and insecticides.

While the researchers found an increased risk between occupational exposure to pesticides and the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, the highest risk came among those who worked around insecticides, especially organochlorine insecticides such as DDT.

In fact, men who worked with organochlorine insecticides had twice the risk as men with no on-the-job exposure. Even more significantly, the Parkinson’s risk increased as a worker’s exposure to these chemicals increased.

The study did not look at any impact pesticides around the home may have on Parkinson’s risk.

This is not the first study to come up with this kind of link.

Lab research, including a study published in Nature Neurscience back in 2000, has found that rats injected with the insecticide rotenone are more likely to develop an animal equivalent of the disease.

The French researchers say the overall risk of getting Parkinson’s is still small, even among workers exposed regularly to insecticide.

But if you’re concerned about risk factors, this one is hard to ignore. If you work with these chemicals, limit your direct exposure as much as possible and follow all the proper safety procedures when handling them. When you do this kind of work for a living, there’s always a danger of complacency, so remain vigilant.

For the rest of us, it’s a good time to take a look at everything we’re exposed to on a regular basis, especially those chemicals you’ve been around so much you’ve stopped noticing them.

Toxins can cause a number of illnesses, diseases and conditions, and the challenge isn’t just identifying them – but avoiding them, day after day.

You’d like to think we know just about everything we need to when it comes to common drugs used to treat major illnesses.

But we don’t.

A new study shows that, yet again, we’re just now learning something about a drug we should have known before it ever was approved in the first place.

As it turns out, dopamine agonists, commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease, can lead to pathological behavior such as compulsive gambling and hypersexuality. Now I’m not saying we should abandon our front line treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, but I am saying we should be a lot more careful about protecting patients from harmful side effects. You see, these types of meds have been around for a long time and I can’t help but wonder why did it take so long to uncover this side effect?

The study, carried out at the Mayo Clinic and published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that these compulsive behaviors may occur nearly 20 percent of the time in patients using therapeutic doses of the dopamine agonists.

Not only that, but because many compulsions often go unrecognized, the researchers believe the true number could be even higher.

Their study looked at 267 Parkinson’s patients, 38 of whom were being treated with therapeutic doses of a dopamine agonist. Of them, six men and one woman – 18.4 percent – developed compulsive gambling, hypersexuality, or both.

The researchers also noted other compulsive activity.

It took as little as one month for those behaviors to start showing up, and they often continued for years, in part because no initial connection was made to the drug.

What’s amazing is that none of the patients in the other treatment groups experienced these psychological conditions. None of them.

This isn’t the first study to make the link, but it’s the first to show it so clearly – and in such a high percentage of patients.

In the past, patients using these drugs have reported life-changing gambling and sexual behaviors, but no one took them very seriously. Meanwhile, some of these folks gambled away their life savings, or watch their marriages crumble, all because of an unreported side effect of a medication they were told would make them better.

Now, I hope these complaints won’t fall on deaf ears anymore.

And if that’s not bad enough, here’s something even more disturbing to consider: Dopamine agonists are also used to treat restless leg syndrome. No one has suggested a link between that use of these meds and these compulsive behaviors, but someone needs to start asking questions soon.

The problem, once again, is the FDA’s approve-first, ask-questions-later approach to drugs.