Parkinson 's Disease And The Disease Of The Nervous System

Parkinson 's disease is a progressive neurologic degenerative disease of the Central Nervous system. The brain produces Dopamine and Norepinephrine, which are chemicals needed for smooth muscle movement and coordination, heart rate, and blood pressure. Dopamine and Norepinephrine are released by basal ganglions that are produced in a bundle of nerve cells in the brainstem called substantia nigra. In Parkinson 's patients, the substantia nigra are destroyed and neither of the chemicals can be released into the body. (3) The decrease in Norepinephrine causes heart arrhythmia and low blood pressure, causing the person to get dizzy upon standing or tire easily. The lack of Dopamine, the smooth muscle movement and coordination controller is now gone, or significantly decreased, resulting in the first signs of Parkinson’s disease, pill-rolling, a one handed tremor and a decreased appetite. (2)

The main symptoms and signs of Parkinson’s are bradykinesia, rigidity and rest tremor. Parkinson’s is mainly seen as a movement disorder, but other areas of health problems are associated with it. These include depression and dementia along with autonomic disturbances and pain, although considered to be rare they can present at a later stage of the condition. These rarer symptoms, as they progress, can lead to substantial disability and handicap which harms quality of life for the person living with Parkinson’s, this also has an impact on families and carer’s.

Parkinson disease (PD), also referred to as Parkinson’s disease and paralysis agitans, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is the third most common neurologic disorder of older adults. It is a debilitating disease affecting motor ability and is characterized by four cardinal symptoms: tremor rigidity, bradykinesia or kinesis (slow movement/no movement), and postural instability. Most people have primary, or idiopathic, disease. A few patients have secondary parkinsonian symptoms from conditions such as brain tumors and certain anti-psychotic drugs.

Parkinson’s disease “is described as a common disorder of the brain caused by a progressive deterioration of the areas that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine” (Fischer, 1999). It affects the nervous system, more specifically it affects the nerve cells in your brain that secrete dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that is responsible for the movement and coordination of the musculoskeletal system.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that slowly erodes an individual's ability to care for themselves. Parkinson's does not have a standard set of symptoms and each person's experience with Parkinson's is unique. What is common is that the disease affects the body's ability to control muscle movements. This may result in tremors, muscle rigidity, difficulty walking, and an inability to perform any task requiring fine motor skills. There is no known cure for Parkinson's disease, and its progressive nature ensures that it is highly debilitating.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects movement. The loss of dopamine neurons in the mid-brain substantia nigra region leads to Parkinson’s, in which a person has rigidity, slowness of movement, postural instability, and typically a resting tremor. It develops gradually, sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand. But while a tremor may be the most common sign of Parkinson’s disease, the disorder also commonly causes stiffness or slowing of

One of the most commonly seen neurological disorders is Parkinson’s disease (PD). Named after the doctor who first identified the disease as “the shaking palsy” Dr James Parkinson (1755-1824), Parkinson’s disease affects over 1 million Americans today. On average around 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease annually. This is an alarming number of new cases but what is even more startling is the fact that thousands of cases go undetected each year as well. PD is a clinical diagnosis with no definitive diagnostic test to identify the disease.

These tremors are most often seen in hands and the feet, but can be seen throughout the entire body. Tremors seem to be the worst when a person is a rest, but subside when a person is active, and completely disappear only when a person is sleeping. Parkinson’s people also have a significant amount of rigidity. They have what you call “cogwheel” movement, where they move in segments per say.(Parkinson’s Disease n.d.) They also have a “lead pipe” movement which as you can guess is heavy moments of the limbs. Loss of postural reflexes is another huge give away for Parkinson’s. People with this disease have a hard time standing up right, and are flexed and hunched over at all joints including the back, hips and knees. You can see the picture on the right is of a very severe case of Parkinson’s, he is showing that bent posture in all positions. Back to the lack of dopamine which I explained before was an inhibitory neurotransmitter, a patient with Parkinson’s becomes very unstable and is less able to make compensatory changes to regain their balance. Those diagnosed have a very distinguished gait pattern, which is another dead giveaway. Because they are flexed forward and have a hard time with their center of gravity, they start to shuffle their feet and fall forward, which is called festinating. There is a significant delay between planning to move and actually moving. They now require

“Parkinson’s Disease, or PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder and is caused by degeneration and dysfunction of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra.” (Corrow, 2013). Although that is the specific definition of Parkinson’s Disease, not all people might understand those terms. When educating patients, it’s important to assess their education level and provide information easily understandable to them. To provide simpler terms, “Parkinson’s is a disease that involves the malfunction and death of vital nerve cells in the brain, typically the basal ganglia within the cerebrum.” (Parkinson Disease Foundation, Inc. 2016). “Some of these dying neurons produce dopamine, a

Parkinson’s Disease is known as one of the most common progressive and chronic neurodegenerative disorders. It belongs to a group of conditions known as movement disorders. Parkinson disease is a component of hypokinetic disorder because it causes a decreased in bodily movement. It affects people who are usually over the age of 50. It can impair an individual motor as well as non-motor function. Some of the primary symptoms of Parkinson’s disease are characterized by tremors or trembling in hands, legs and arms. In early symptoms the tremor can be unilateral, appearing in one side of body but progression in the disease can cause it to spread to both sides; rigidity or a resistant to movement affects most people with Parkinson’s disease,

Parkinson 's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder and a movement disorder. Parkinson’s is the gradual loss of the ability to control muscle movement thereby, resulting in the trembling of the limbs and the head even during rest. Other characteristics include slowness, stiffness and impaired balance. As the Parkinson 's disease progress it becomes hard for the patient to move, to talk and even fulfill simple tasks (Berg et al., 201,4). Parkinson’s disease varies from one patient to the next patient reason being that the rate of impairment for an individual patient is faster, for others, they tend to live many more years. The premature death is often brought about by complications to do injuries such as falling or pneumonia.

Diagnosing a patient early into Parkinson’s is difficult because all the symptoms increasingly get worse. There is a large variety of symptoms a patient may see. The symptoms that are primary motor skills include a resting tremor, bradykinesia which is slow movement, rigidity which is the lack of flexibility in your limbs, and postural instability. Secondary Motor symptoms are freezing, where you feel glued to the ground, micrographia, a shrinkage in handwriting, being less expressive in the face, and unwanted accelerations like in your speech. Non motor symptoms include loss of smell, constipation, having difficulty

The primary symptoms of Parkinson's Disease stem from the deterioration of the part of the brain that controls motor functioning (NHGRI, 1998). This region is the substantia nigra which is found deep within the brain stem and contains neuronomelanin, pigment cells, which synapse to cells of the striatum. The striatum is responsible for balance, control of movements, and

Parkinson’s Disease is a very common disorder these days. Over 10 million people live daily with Parkinson worldwide. Parkinson’s Disease was named after an English surgeon James Parkinson who wrote a detailed description essay called Shaking Palsy in 1817. The average age for Parkinson’s Disease is between 45 to 70 years old but you can also have juvenile or young onset as well. Most common symptoms of Parkinson are tremors, bradykinesia or akinesia, or rigidity or stiffness, and balance disorder. Parkinson’s Disease doesn’t have a cure and the cause is unknown it could be a number of things genetics, environmental triggers, age, or gender. Parkinson’s Disease happens because the dopaminergic neuron dies and

Parkinson disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized mainly by physical and psychological disabilities. This disorder was named after James Parkinson, an English physician who first described it as shaking palsy in 1817 (Goetz, Factr, and Weiner, 2002). Jean- Martin Charcot, who was a French neurologist, then progressed and further refined the description of the disease and identified other clinical features of PD (Goetz, Factr, and Weiner, 2002). PD involves the loss of cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine in a part of the brain stem called the substansia nigra, which results in several signs and symptoms (Byrd, Marks, and Starr, 2000). It is manifested clinically by tremor,