Parkinson’s
Disease
A guide to Parkinson’s disease, treatment options and how red light therapy can help.
What is Parkinson’s disease?
Think of Parkinson’s and you think of an old person, usually an old man, with his head down, his hands shaking, slowly shuffling along the footpath Parkinson’s is a lot more than the shake and the shuffle. It is a disease of the brain that affects all aspects of a person’s life – physical, emotional and intellectual. If you ask people with Parkinson’s to describe the symptoms that cause them the most misery, they don’t complain about the obvious symptoms like the tremor or problems walking. The symptoms that cause most despair to people with Parkinson’s are largely invisible to others – the nonmotor symptoms:
lack of sleep
being apathetic and disinterested in life
feeling low, flat and sad
fatigue
brain fog
feeling anxious
The presence of these nonmotor symptoms predicts whether someone has to move out of home and into a nursing home. These symptoms are significant in the lives of people with Parkinson’s. These symptoms are equally significant in the lives of family members and carers. To an outsider, Parkinson’s doesn’t look like a very subtle disease. But the nastiest symptoms, the nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson’s are indeed very subtle, sneaky and tricky. And they often start years before there is any other evidence of Parkinson’s.
What causes Parkinson’s disease?
We don’t really know why, but there is a change in a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. In the basal ganglia, brain cells are specialised to generate a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is then sent out to other parts of the brain where it is used in a variety of different ways. One important thing that dopamine does is to make muscle movements smooth and automatic.
These important dopamine-producing brain cells start to lose power and begin to die. It seems that the batteries inside these cells, the mitochondria, get tired and are unable to keep up sufficient power to keep these cells making dopamine.
No new cells are made, so over time (sometimes decades) there are fewer and fewer cells generating dopamine. The amount of dopamine in the brain reduces ever so slowly and ever so subtly. Eventually the low levels of dopamine reaches a tipping point, and the brain isn’t able to compensate. There is an impact on a range of activities that the brain controls, especially to do with movement.
Confusingly, there are effects on the brain that are not related to low dopamine levels, and these can be the very earliest symptoms of Parkinson’s. For some people these early symptoms, called prodromal symptoms , appear more than ten years before there is any sign of movement problems. These are non-motor symptoms mentioned earlier – things like fatigue, sleep disruption, losing the sense of smell, losing interest in things, losing intellectual abilities, losing confidence in yourself and losing confidence in social situations.
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How is Parkinson’s disease treated?
The mainstay of Parkinson’s treatment is for the movement symptoms. A family of drugs based on levodopa is used worldwide. The good effect of levodopa on Parkinson’s symptoms was first reported in 1968, and having this drug has made a huge difference to people living with Parkinson’s.
Levodopa acts directly on the remaining dopamine-producing brain cells and galvanises them into generating more dopamine for the brain to use. While the dopamine levels are high, you feel great and can move much more like your old self, then as the levodopa dose wears off, things aren’t so great.
Levodopa is terrific while your brain still has some of these cells left. Once the last of the dopamine-generating cells has died, levodopa doesn’t have any effect at all. As well, levodopa can leave people with a permanent side-effect called dyskinesia, where your body moves without your being in control.
Levodopa only affects the motor or muscle symptoms of Parkinson’s, and has no effect on the nonmotor symptoms.
Who gets Parkinson’s disease?
Parkinson’s is usually first diagnosed in people over the age of sixty years, and men tend to be more at risk than women. There are rare variants that start in younger people, but usually it appears in people in the older age-groups.
Can I avoid ever getting Parkinson’s disease?
At this stage, it doesn’t look like you can do anything specific to stop getting Parkinson’s, although maintaining a high degree of exercise and a good diet is definitely protective against all neurodegenerative diseases.
How are the nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease treated?
There is no treatment available for most nonmotor symptoms. While depression and anxiety can be treated with medication, it isn’t always helpful and there is the increased potential for side effects. There is no available conventional treatment for the worst nonmotor symptoms - fatigue, sleeplessness, apathy, cognitive impairment, nor for the loss of the sense of smell. Your doctor will sympathise with you as you talk about these symptoms, but there is nothing that drug therapy can offer. Keep scrolling down…
How soon before I notice improvements in my Parkinson’s disease using the Coronet?
Everyone is different, and we have found that there is no single answer that is correct for everyone. Some people seem to respond quite quickly, while others take a longer time. To confuse this, we have noticed that some people seem to be less able to discern changes in themselves. That sounds like a bizarre statement, but it is based on experience with people with Parkinson’s using light hat devices. People in this group have very frustrated families, because everyone around them can see the changes, but the individual is totally unconvinced. It may be that there is a gender difference in being able to perceive changes – women seem to be more attune to changes (good or bad) within themselves. This is an observation only and is another thing that future research will be able to help with.
The reason for telling you all this is that you should not just rely on your own perceptions. You should ask other people to keep an eye out for any differences in all aspects of your interactions. Often other people notice things first, for example:
You’ve stopped coughing – you used to cough all the time
You haven’t complained for ages about swallowing that blood pressure pill
You are walking faster than you used to
You’ve got more energy – haven’t seen you get involved in that for ages
You’ve become pretty chatty these days
I don’t have to repeat things to you as often as I used to