Parkinson's Disease - Know Its Causes and Symptoms!
What causes Parkinson’s disease?
Our brain runs on electricity and chemicals. If there is too much or too little of a particular chemical in your brain, it causes a disease. Parkinson’s disease is caused by the reduction of a chemical called “Dopamine” in our brain.Dopamine is produced in the back of our brain, in a part called the “Mid-Brain”. It is then transported forwards and is widely distributed throughout the entire brain. It fires up the movement centers of our brain, and helps them communicate better with one another.
In Parkinson’s disease, the cells in the midbrain producing Dopamine gradually die. No one quite understands why this happens. The net effect is that the movement centers of the brain don’t communicate well with one another, and this produces the various symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
What are the symptoms of Parkinson's?
MOTOR Symptoms |
NON-MOTOR Symptoms |
1. Shaking of the hands while resting. | Difficulty in thinking |
2. Stiff & inflexible muscle | Depression, Fatigue |
3. Bending forward while walking | Pain in one part of the body especially legs or throughout the body |
4. Difficulty turning around while walking | Ribbling of saliva from the mouth |
5. Getting stuck in one position while walking | Tingling and restlessness of the legs in the evening or at night |
6. In later stages, they can fall frequently. They get slow in doing things | Difficulty sleeping at night, Feeling sleepy during the day |
7. Expressionless Face | Vivid and fearful dreams |
Violent movements of hands and legs while sleeping | |
Problems controlling your bladder, having to rush to the bathroom | |
Constipation Difficulty in seeing things, especially on waking up |
All patients do not have all of these symptoms. Some patients experience just the shaking of hands; other people experience just the muscle stiffness and so on. Often as people get older, more and more of the dopamine-producing cells are destroyed and patients start developing more symptoms. But it takes years for this to happen and it may not happen in all people. In some patients, Parkinson's disease remains restricted to just a few symptoms.
In case you have a concern or query you can always consult an expert & get answers to your questions!