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Parkinson's Disease - It's Not Just About the Shakes

In defining Parkinson's disease these days, it is not just a matter of it being a disease that affects motor coordination. In fact, classifying it as such can make the difference in how the disease is treated now and in the future. In the early 1800s, English physician Dr. James Parkinson called the series of impaired motor symptoms that we know as Parkinson's disease the s"haking palsy." But almost two hundred years later, medical researchers and neurologists are just now coming to understand that the disease is more than just the tremors, stiffness and slowness in movement.

The 1960s brought great insight into why Parkinson's disease occurs. There is an area in the brain that produces the chemical dopamine which trickles into areas of the brain that control motor function. When those cells become damaged or die off, the less dopamine there is released, the more likely the motor impairment such as shaking will occur. A rudimentary medication that mimics dopamine was created to help combat these motor symptoms. The only problem was that motor function was not the only impairments these Parkinson's patients suffered from.

A number of other symptoms of the disease manifested themselves and at first were not attributed to the disease but considered a by-product. However, the cases of depression, fatigue, reduced capacity of smell and even constipation soon became linked with Parkinson's. These symptoms are vastly different from the motor impairments that are the telling characteristics of the disease. Doctors and medical researchers are coming to the conclusion that they have been a little too narrow-minded in the classification of Parkinson's disease.

Some researchers have decided that the disease does not start in the area of the brain that produces the dopamine but rather in the lower brain stem. They theorize that the earliest stages start in the lower brain stem which controls the sense of smell and by the time it worsens to create the motor impairment, it has made it into the area of the brain that produces the dopamine. There are other precursors that indicate certain people have the propensity to get the disease. For instance, in a test group of men who had a certain sleep disorder, over 40% of them developed Parkinson's disease.

Virtually 100% of men who have Parkinson's disease said they lost part of their sense of smell and a good portion had experienced fatigue, diminished heart function and constipation. When cross-checked with the men with sleep disorders, that 40% who developed the disease also had these other atypical symptoms! Because of the correlations of non-motor impairments in Parkinson's patients, medical researchers are looking for other symptom tie-ins.

Right now, one of the biggest pushes in Parkinson's disease research is determining the exact cause of the disease and where it may originate in the brain. Many doctors and researchers feel that if they can find the true starting point of the disease, they have a good chance of heading it off before it even develops. If that is the case, the number of new cases each year of Parkinson's disease will surely drop.