What is Parkinson’s Disease may sound like a funny question at this point, especially considering that I’ve written about everything from PD drugs to specific posts dedicated to people that have been affected by Parkinson’s disease, but I was looking through the search engines under said question and I couldn’t find great information easily, so I’m writing this for two reasons:
- To establish some content on the web and search engines that easily addresses said question
- To create another place on my website to have this questions answered (the other place to find it is on my Parkinson’s FAQ page)
Parkinson’s disease a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. It affects 1 in 100 people over the age of 60. On average the disease onset is 60 years old, although 5 to 10 percent will see the disease onset between 30 to 40 years old–like Michael J. Fox. It occurs when neurons that produce dopamine die off quickly. When a large portion of the neurons that produce neurons die, patients begin to feel the symptoms of tremors, stiffness, and other similar symptoms. Parkinson’s is a chronic and progressive disease, but because each person is different the disease may manifest itself in different ways.
Currently about 1 million Americans have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and about 6 million people worldwide. Disease symptoms include resting tremor, slowness of movement, postural instability, and rigidity. Tremors are unwanted and uncontrollable movement when a limb is resting and rigidity is abnormal stiffness in a limb. Both of these symptoms probably seem like they contradict each other to a point. These symptoms can be frustrating for someone who has PD because they are so opposite and because they are opposite you would think that you can only have one, but that’s not the case, often they are manifested together. Symptoms are different for everyone and are manifested differently and often at a different pace than everyone else.
If you’d like to learn more I would suggest visiting www.michaeljfox.org
