Your visit to the neurologist is successful if, upon leaving the office, you know what’s wrong and what the neurologist can do to make you better. The visit is less successful if, upon leaving the...
Although your primary care doctor may have recognized the symptoms of PD, he or she is trained primarily in family medicine or internal medicine and may see few people with PD. Although primary care doc-tors...
About half of all PD patients have difficulty speaking. The difficulty ranges in severity from minor to moderate in most patients, and marked in about 10%. Minor difficulties may be barely perceptible to most listeners...
In observing and treating 50 PD patients and their 46 spouses, the most important observation this author made was that 90% of the patients, all of whom maintained their ability to walk 20 to 40...
Drooling (sialorrhea), or excessive saliva, results from difficulty swallowing and is a frequent symptom in PD. Most of the time, drooling is merely an annoyance. However, sometimes it’s an embarrassment, and sometimes it’s even a...
Constipation is a common complaint of people with PD. Not having a daily bowel movement isn’t constipation, though; constipation is defined as two or fewer bowel movements per week. Defecating difficulty is defined as straining...
Bladder problems, such as urinary frequency, can be a frustrating and embarrassing effect of PD-related symptoms. The bladder is a smooth muscle, called the detrusor, which is shaped like a hollow pyramid with its apex...
Secondary symptoms may be a combination of one or more primary symptoms, or may occur less frequently, or they may be relatively minor. Some secondary symptoms, however, can result in major disability. Not everyone with...
There are four main, or primary, symptoms of PD. To diagnose PD, at least two of these symptoms must be present. Tremor is the most characteristic symptom of PD and may be the first symptom...
In 1967, before effective drugs (such as levodopa, Mirapex, or Comtan) became available for PD, people diagnosed with PD lived, on average, 6–15 years from diagnosis to death. Some people with PD fell and fractured...
In 1967, Drs. Margaret Hoehn and Melvin Yahr devised a 6-point scale from 0 to 5, in order to classify the stages of PD. When this scale was first created, levodopa had not yet changed...
Viruses have been suspected as a cause of PD since an epidemic of “sleeping sickness” (also called encephalitis lethargica or von Economo’s encephali-tis) occurred early in the 20th century. The following description of the epidemic...
Major strokes are caused by a blockage of large or medium-sized arteries: the “pipes” through which blood flows. Arteries harden in older people, especially if they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or have...
A small number of people (about 1%) who sustain a significant head injury later develop PD. A “significant head injury” means the person was in a coma for at least an hour, was hospitalized, and...
There are, literally, hundreds of thousands of potential toxins in the air, the soil, in your home, at your work, and in your food and water. Whether any given toxin causes PD has not yet...
Heredity, or genetic predisposition, may play a role in developing PD. Between 15% and 25% of people with PD report that another relative also has PD. In about 1% of families, PD is known to...
The process of PD in your body may start 5 to 20 years before the first symptoms are recognized. In those rare cases of inherited PD, the process may even start at birth. The long...
The main symptoms of Parkinson disease result from a lack of a chemical substance in the brain, a specific neuro-transmitter (so called because it transmits messages from one cell to another) called dopamine. In PD,...
Although PD is more common in older people, it is not exclusive to them. The peak onset of PD is 60 years, which is hardly considered old these days. Moreover, 15% of PD patients are...
Parkinson disease is diagnosed on the presence of two of the four main or cardinal symptoms. The cardinal symptoms include: a resting tremor, rigidity or stiff-ness, bradykinesia (defined as slowness and incomplete-ness of movement), and...
Parkinson disease (PD) is a disease of the nervous sys-tem. Initially, PD affects a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, a region that regulates movement, posture, and balance. In time, PD may affect...