I spent twenty years in advertising, eight of them as YouTube's Global Head of Brand, building campaigns for one of the biggest platforms on earth. Then, in 2016, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and I started the strangest brief of my career: working out how to live well with a condition that plays a very long game.
The diagnosis itself took a while to arrive. It took over a year to be diagnosed in the US, where I was living at the time, and when I came back to the UK I waited another eighteen months for my first neurological appointment. I learned early that the days between appointments, which is to say almost all of them, were going to be mine to manage.
Why Day2 exists
Day2 is the thing I went looking for the week after diagnosis and never found: something for the ordinary Tuesday. Not a medical device, not a replacement for a neurologist, but a daily companion for the part of Parkinson's that was always going to fall to me anyway. What to do this morning, what to eat today, and someone to ask at four in the morning.
Nobody told me to exercise hard. I worked it out myself, years in, and the evidence has since caught up with what I stumbled into. That gap, between what the research knows and what a newly diagnosed person is actually told, is the gap Day2 is built to close. I build it with Ed Shaw, the movement specialist who trains me. We met at his gym. The rest is history.
Beyond Day2
I'm a trustee of Spotlight YOPD, the patient-led charity raising awareness of young onset Parkinson's and supporting the people living with it. Getting diagnosed young comes with its own set of questions, about work, family and the decades ahead, and too few places take them seriously. Spotlight YOPD does.
How I write
Everything I publish on the Day2 journal is sourced from Parkinson's UK, the NHS, or the research itself, and filtered through ten years of living with the condition. I write the pieces I wish someone had handed me at the start. I don't give medical advice, and anything about medication belongs with your clinical team, always.
Writing by Matt
- Parkinson's plays a long game. So can you.
- No one told me to exercise hard. I worked it out myself
- Why am I losing weight with Parkinson's?
- Does protein stop your Parkinson's medication working?
- Telling the DVLA about Parkinson's: what actually happens
- Why is my handwriting getting smaller with Parkinson's?
- Why is my voice getting quieter with Parkinson's?
- Why the afternoon is harder
If you'd like to talk: matt@day2health.com. If you've just been diagnosed, start with what Ed would tell you first, then come and try Day2. It's free while we're testing.