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Typical Gastrointestinal Malfunctions that Occur with PD aka Parkinson's

When most people think of Parkinson's disease, they likely picture tremors, shakes, body stiffness and moving slowly. No one considers just exactly how these symptoms fan out and create problems in other places in the body. Parkinson's disease not only impairs motor function but also causes blips in other areas such as the autonomic nervous system. All of those functions that are done automatically like the heart beat, sweating, swallowing, digesting food, sexual function and even body elimination are impacted as part of the autonomic nervous system.

Perhaps one of the most serious impacts that Parkinson's disease aka PD has is to the gastrointestinal tract. In the human body, the gastrointestinal process starts in the mouth and ends with the anus. Saliva starts the digestion process of food during chewing so the food starts to break down and is easier to swallow and obviously, the anus is the last place the end product of the digestion process ends up before being eliminated. There are multiple places in between where there could be problems.

People with PD have drooling issues, not because their body is producing excess saliva. In fact, they don't produce enough. But what they do produce is hard to swallow because swallowing saliva is one of the autonomic nervous system functions, an area that is affected by the disease. In fact, there are other mouth issues such as burning sensations and teeth grinding that are by-products as well. Some PD patients are embarrassed by the drooling in public and will sometimes chew gum or suck on candy to stimulate the swallowing action which reduces drooling.

Dysphagia, which is difficulty swallowing, is a by-product of Parkinson's and over 50% of patients has it. Because there are muscle coordination issues, the act of swallowing requires a symbiotic relationship between the muscles in the throat and mouth. When this does not occur, patients have a hard time getting food to go down the esophagus. Sometimes, this difficulty causes food or liquid to back up into the windpipe to cause lung aspiration which translates into pneumonia. Medications and physical therapy can help patients with the swallowing reflex.

Gastroparesis is another gastrointestinal condition that can befall on Parkinson's patients. This condition is the weakened ability of your stomach to empty its contents for processing in the intestines. PD patients with this condition will feel full and bloated even if they have eaten very little. This condition can affect how quickly Parkinson's medications are metabolized in the body. Not enough study in the US has been done in regards to this condition although there are drug treatments and even patches available that might alleviate some of the gastroparesis.

Just the act of eating and digesting the food alone can be greatly impacted by Parkinson's disease. For this reason, this condition should be monitored closely as serious side effects like pneumonia could occur. PD patients with digestion issues should speak with their doctors to see what drug or physical intervention can be adopted to handle digestion problems because the only other option left is a feeding tube straight through the stomach.