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Does Parkinson’s Affect The Mind

What Are The Symptoms Of Parkinson Disease

Dr. James Beck – How does Parkinson’s disease affect the brain?

Parkinson disease symptoms usually start out mild, and then progressively get much worse. The first signs are often so subtle that many people don’t seek medical attention at first. These are common symptoms of Parkinson disease:

  • Tremors that affect the face and jaw, legs, arms, and hands
  • Slow, stiff walking

What Are The Causes

The cause of Parkinson’s is largely unknown. Scientists are currently investigating the role that genetics, environmental factors, and the natural process of aging have on cell death and PD.

There are also secondary forms of PD that are caused by medications such as haloperidol , reserpine , and metoclopramide .

Caring For Your Health With Parkinsons Disease

In addition to caring for your Parkinsons health, it is also important to care for your overall health. This means visiting your primary care physician periodically for preventive care like the annual flu shot and cancer screeningsfor example, a mammogram for breast cancer screening and a colonoscopy for colon cancer screening.

A primary care physician can also evaluate for risk factors related to heart attacks and strokes, and provide counseling on exercise, smoking, alcohol use, depression, or other mental health concerns. Regular visits to your primary care physician or neurologist will also allow them to catch bacterial infections like urinary tract infections before they get serious.

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What Exactly Are Lewy Bodies

Lewy bodies are “clumps” of protein that accumulate in the outer layers of the brain, also known as the cortex. In addition to Parkinson’s, they are also a feature of dementia. Although we don’t know precisely what part Lewy bodies play in Parkinson’s disease or dementia, we do know that they are not the sole cause of Parkinson’s disease and its various symptoms. Some studies indicate that dopamine cells die before they even reach this part of the brain, but this is unconfirmed.

Despite the enigma of the Parkinson’s brain, many scientists have identified Lewy bodies as a potential target for new treatments. These treatments for Parkinson’s disease could be available in a matter of years, not decades.

Researchers Trace Clues To The Diseases Effects On Patients Mental Ability

Back Conditions

Patients with Parkinsons disease are known to exhibit slowed movements and tremors, but one aspect of their condition is often overlooked: cognitive impairment.

Unlike with Alzheimers and other dementias, patients with Parkinsons dont lose their memory. Instead, they may develop trouble with planning, making decisions and controlling their emotions, and often exhibit changes in personality as a result. About one-third to one-half of Parkinsons sufferers exhibit some signs of cognitive impairment at the time they are diagnosed, but over time virtually all patients will experience substantial cognitive decline.

With Alzheimers disease, the patient often stops recognizing family. With Parkinsons, its like the family doesnt recognize anymore, says Thomas Montine, a neuropathologist who heads the Parkinsons disease research center at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Researchers like Dr. Montine and his colleagues at the university are investigating why the impairment occurs in hopes of better understanding the disease and improving current diagnostic and treatment methods.

Some 500,000 people in the U.S. are thought to have Parkinsons and the numbers are expected to grow as the population gets older, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md. The disease begins on average around age 60 and the risk of Parkinsons increases with age.

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Drugs And Medication Used To Treat Parkinsons Disease

A number of different drugs can be used to treat Parkinsons.

Levodopa

Levodopa is the most common treatment for Parkinsons. It helps to replenish dopamine.

About 75 percent of cases respond to levodopa, but not all symptoms are improved. Levodopa is generally given with carbidopa.

Carbidopa delays the breakdown of levodopa which in turn increases the availability of levodopa at the blood-brain barrier.

Dopamine agonists

Dopamine agonists can imitate the action of dopamine in the brain. Theyre less effective than levodopa, but they can be useful as bridge medications when levodopa is less effective.

Drugs in this class include bromocriptine, pramipexole, and ropinirole.

Anticholinergics

Anticholinergics are used to block the parasympathetic nervous system. They can help with rigidity.

Benztropine and trihexyphenidyl are anticholinergics used to treat Parkinsons.

Amantadine

Amantadine can be used along with carbidopa-levodopa. Its a glutamate-blocking drug . It offers short-term relief for the involuntary movements that can be a side effect of levodopa.

COMT inhibitors

Catechol O-methyltransferase inhibitors prolong the effect of levodopa. Entacapone and tolcapone are examples of COMT inhibitors.

Tolcapone can cause liver damage. Its usually saved for people who do not respond to other therapies.

Ectacapone does not cause liver damage.

Stalevo is a drug that combines ectacapone and carbidopa-levodopa in one pill.

MAO-B inhibitors

Mid-late stage

Tips For A Better Sex Life With Parkinsons Disease

  • Communicate: Be open with your partner about your feelings and discuss your physical needs. If the topic of sex causes upset or arguments, it might be worth seeing a sex therapist.
  • Consider changing your medication: If your medication is having an impact on your sex life, talk to your doctor about an alternative treatment. Your sex life is important, so it should be given as much attention and care as your general health and wellbeing.
  • Be open with your doctor: Dont be afraid to talk about sex with your doctor thats what your healthcare team is there for, and they will have dealt with these types of concerns before.
  • Deal with fatigue and depression: Depression and fatigue can negatively impact your sex life, so look at ways of treating these symptoms. A combination of therapy and antidepressant medications may help, so talk to your doctor.

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What Medications Are Used To Treat Parkinsons Disease

Medications are the main treatment method for patients with Parkinsons disease. Your doctor will work closely with you to develop a treatment plan best suited for you based on the severity of your disease at the time of diagnosis, side effects of the drug class and success or failure of symptom control of the medications you try.

Medications combat Parkinsons disease by:

  • Helping nerve cells in the brain make dopamine.
  • Mimicking the effects of dopamine in the brain.
  • Blocking an enzyme that breaks down dopamine in the brain.
  • Reducing some specific symptoms of Parkinsons disease.

Levodopa: Levodopa is a main treatment for the slowness of movement, tremor, and stiffness symptoms of Parkinsons disease. Nerve cells use levodopa to make dopamine, which replenishes the low amount found in the brain of persons with Parkinsons disease. Levodopa is usually taken with carbidopa to allow more levodopa to reach the brain and to prevent or reduce the nausea and vomiting, low blood pressure and other side effects of levodopa. Sinemet® is available in an immediate release formula and a long-acting, controlled release formula. Rytary® is a newer version of levodopa/carbidopa that is a longer-acting capsule. The newest addition is Inbrija®, which is inhaled levodopa. It is used by people already taking regular carbidopa/levodopa for when they have off episodes .

Memory Difficulties In Parkinsons

Parkinson’s Disease: How is the brain affected?

The most common difficulty for people with PD is remembering information that has previously been learned. Memory has several different processes and types, and people with PD have trouble recalling information but their long-term memory function generally remains intact. Memory cues or choices can help people with PD to retrieve information from the brains long-term storage.3,4

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What Makes Pd Hard To Predict

Parkinsonâs comes with two main buckets of possible symptoms. One affects your ability to move and leads to motor issues like tremors and rigid muscles. The other bucket has non-motor symptoms, like pain, loss of smell, and dementia.

You may not get all the symptoms. And you canât predict how bad theyâll be, or how fast theyâll get worse. One person may have slight tremors but severe dementia. Another might have major tremors but no issues with thinking or memory. And someone else may have severe symptoms all around.

On top of that, the drugs that treat Parkinsonâs work better for some people than others. All that adds up to a disease thatâs very hard to predict.

How Tom Affect Pd Patients In Daily Living

Studies have explored the impact of cognitive and affective ToM dysfunction on real life especially the quality of life . Both studies used the PD questionnaire to measure the health-related QoL. Bodden et al. first found a significant correlation between total PDQ-39 score and measures of affective but not cognitive ToM among patients with advanced stage PD . Subsequently, Santangelo and colleagues excluded depressed PD patients and included early stage patients in order to explore this issue, and their results showed that cognitive ToM was associated with 2 domains, social support and cognitive deficits subscales, of PDQ-39. Therefore, it was suggested that defects in the cognitive aspect of ToM might have a more negative impact on QoL compared to the affective component. Taken together, these findings imply that ToM plays an important role in daily living and affects QoL. However, more research is still needed to explore the impact of ToM on real life and social interactions.

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Living With Parkinson Disease

These measures can help you live well with Parkinson disease:

  • An exercise routine can help keep muscles flexible and mobile. Exercise also releases natural brain chemicals that can improve emotional well-being.
  • High protein meals can benefit your brain chemistry
  • Physical, occupational, and speech therapy can help your ability to care for yourself and communicate with others
  • If you or your family has questions about Parkinson disease, want information about treatment, or need to find support, you can contact the American Parkinson Disease Association.

Physical Effects Often Experienced By Aging Adults With Parkinsons

Parkinsons Disease  Medical
By 9 am on September 9, 2019

Even though Parkinsons disease can impact cognitive skills and emotional wellbeing, this condition is closely tied to a variety of physical problems as well. There currently isnt a permanent cure for Parkinsons, but doctors have come up with quite a few treatments and therapies that can greatly boost quality of life. Heres a quick look at six of the most common physical impacts of Parkinsons disease and some steps seniors and their caregivers can take to address those issues.

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Causes Of Cognitive Impairment In Pd

The exact causes of cognitive impairment or dementia in Parkinsons disease are not fully understood. There may be changes in the neurochemical signals that the brain uses to pass along information to different regions of the brain. Besides dopamine, the neurochemical signals acetylcholine, serotonin, and norepinephrine are especially important for cognition, memory, attention, and mood. In autopsy studies, Lewy bodies, abnormal protein accumulations, have been found in neurons in brain regions responsible for cognitive processes. Other causes include co-existing strokes or mini-strokes or Alzheimers disease pathology.

How Will The Disease Affect My Life

Most people who have Parkinsonâs live a normal to a nearly normal lifespan, but the disease can be life changing.

For some people, treatment keeps the symptoms at bay, and they’re mostly mild. For others, the disease is much more serious and really limits what you’re able to do.

As it gets worse, it makes it harder and harder to do daily activities like getting out of bed, driving, or going to work. Even writing can seem like a tough task. And in later stages, it can cause dementia.

Even though Parkinson’s can have a big impact on your life, with the right treatment and help from your health care team, you can still enjoy the things you love. It’s important to reach out to family and friends for support. Learning to live with Parkinson’s means making sure you get the backing you need.

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What You Can Expect

Parkinson does follow a broad pattern. While it moves at different paces for different people, changes tend to come on slowly. Symptoms usually get worse over time, and new ones probably will pop up along the way.

Parkinsonâs doesnât always affect how long you live. But it can change your quality of life in a major way. After about 10 years, most people will have at least one major issue, like dementia or a physical disability.

How Is Parkinson Disease Diagnosed

How does Parkinsons disease affect memory?

Parkinson disease can be hard to diagnose. No single test can identify it. Parkinson can be easily mistaken for another health condition. A healthcare provider will usually take a medical history, including a family history to find out if anyone else in your family has Parkinson’s disease. He or she will also do a neurological exam. Sometimes, an MRI or CT scan, or some other imaging scan of the brain can identify other problems or rule out other diseases.

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How Might Parkinsons Affect Your Mental Health

Mental health is defined as emotional, psychological and social well being and is an essential part of everyones overall health. Mental health is often spoken about these days in the popular press and is particularly important to understand as it relates to someone with Parkinsons disease .

As with every symptom of PD, there is a huge amount of variation between people when it comes to mental health. There are some people with PD who have no mental health concerns and others whose main difficulties stem from depression, anxiety, psychosis or cognitive issues, which all can be non-motor symptoms of PD. Most people with PD deal with some degree of one or more of these four elements.

What Causes Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease occurs when nerve cells, or neurons, in an area of the brain that controls movement become impaired and/or die. Normally, these neurons produce an important brain chemical known as dopamine. When the neurons die or become impaired, they produce less dopamine, which causes the movement problems of Parkinson’s. Scientists still do not know what causes cells that produce dopamine to die.

People with Parkinson’s also lose the nerve endings that produce norepinephrine, the main chemical messenger of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls many functions of the body, such as heart rate and blood pressure. The loss of norepinephrine might help explain some of the non-movement features of Parkinson’s, such as fatigue, irregular blood pressure, decreased movement of food through the digestive tract, and sudden drop in blood pressure when a person stands up from a sitting or lying-down position.

Many brain cells of people with Parkinson’s contain Lewy bodies, unusual clumps of the protein alpha-synuclein. Scientists are trying to better understand the normal and abnormal functions of alpha-synuclein and its relationship to genetic mutations that impact Parkinsons disease and Lewy body dementia.

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Is There A Parkinson’s Disease Brain Scan

MRI brain scans and single photon emission computed tomography scans are often performed to rule out other causes of your symptoms, including strokes or a brain tumor. However, neither of these scans are diagnostic of Lewy bodies. There is no Parkinson’s disease brain scan, and no tests can conclusively show that you have Parkinson’s disease.

APA ReferenceSmith, E. . How Parkinsons Disease Affects the Brain, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2021, August 27 from https://www.healthyplace.com/parkinsons-disease/effects/how-parkinsons-disease-affects-the-brain

Living With Parkinson’s Disease

The placebo effect  How It Works

Coming to terms with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s and living with the disease is challenging and will take a lot of adjustment. There are still things you can do that can help you to feel more in control of your situation and to stay positive. Some things that might help could include:

  • choosing to lead a healthy lifestyle
  • making informed decisions related to your treatment
  • keeping a diary of your symptoms in preparation for meetings with health and social care professionals
  • attending a self-management course

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What Happens In Low Blood Pressure

Low blood pressure or hypotension occurs when the blood vessels become wider and unable to constrict. This result in insufficient blood supply to all the organs of the body.

In Parkinsons, the patient experienced low blood pressure when changing position. For example, from lying to sitting or from sitting to standing. This is known as postural hypotension. When it happens, the patient starts to feel dizziness, blurred vision, fainting, and an unsteady feeling. In this situation, walking can be troublesome the patient can easily fall, which could lead to serious injuries.

Low blood pressure can also affect memory and thinking functions of the brain . Parkinsons patient experience the difficulty in moment judgment meaning they are confused where to move the leg or hand. Sometimes, these brain changes appear without feeling dizziness or blurred vision. The only way to be sure that these signs are the consequence of low blood pressure is to measure your blood pressure regularly.

What Is It And How Does It Affect Those Whove Been Diagnosed

Parkinsons disease is a type of movement disorder that can affect the ability to perform common, daily activities. It is a chronic and progressive disease, meaning that the symptoms become worse over time. It is characterized by its most common of motor symptomstremors , stiffness or rigidity of the muscles, and slowness of movement but also manifests in non-motor symptoms including sleep problems, constipation, anxiety, depression, and fatigue, among others.

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How Does Parkinsons Affect The Mind

As aforementioned, Parkinsons can heavily impact the physical well-being of an individual that is experiencing serious complications and symptoms of the disease. However, just as an individual starts to feel the physical impacts on their body, their mental state and well-being may start to feel compromised as well. If an individual that has been faithfully running 5 miles a day starts to lose balance due to complications of Parkinsons Disease, he or she will likely start to feel depressed, anxious and sad over their inability to carry out their daily tasks.

As a seniors Parkinsons Disease starts to worsen over time, family members may start to see a shift in their overall mood and mental state. Not only can Parkinsons literally take an individuals ability to think clearly, but he or she may start to feel things that they had never felt before such as depression or anxiety. This can be one of many mental complications from this debilitation disease. Parkinsons can cause an individual to feel unmotivated to carry out everyday tasks or to put effort into improving their quality of life, as they may feel their life is declining anyways. It is important to recognize the signs of depression and mental health issues in seniors and know when it is time to step in and help them. Mental and emotional issues may start to heavily impact people with Parkinsons, as it may take away their drive and willingness to work towards a healthier and happier lifestyle.

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