Parkinson’s Disease is a degenerative disorder of the nervous system. Parkinson’s is a disease that may happen in younger people, but the risk mainly increaseswith age. This is because many of the cellular systems in the brain are difficult to renewby themselves while there are trillions of nerve cells in the brain to compensate for theloss of these cells. For example, in Parkinson's disease the symptoms are caused by theselective loss of a small population in the brain consisting of about 500,000dopaminergic cells. The dopaminergic cells are situated deep in the midbrain and carriesmessages back and forth to nerve cells. In any brain that grows older, some of thesedopamine cells will die over time. The rate at which the cells die is different amongindividuals. Some people, whose rate of dopamine cell death is slightly higher thannormal. the chance that they will soon lose critical 85-90 percent of the cells that areneeded for normal function is high. The brain can somehow manage to compensate for aloss of about 85 percent of these cells, but when only a small number of workingdopamine cells or less remain on each side of the brain, the symptoms of Parkinson'sdisease appear. The neurotransmission that takes place at the nerve terminals thatproduce dopamine is needed for all of us to initiate movements, and without it, we freezeup and become unable to move. Tremors are the symptom the public most often identifies with Parkinson'sdisease, but in fact up to 25 percent of patients experience very slight tremor or non atall. When it is present, the tremor may be worse on one side of the body. Besidesaffecting the arms and legs, it sometimes spreads to the head, neck, face, and the jaw. Another symptom of Parkinson's disease is Rigidity, which is an increased tone orstiffness in the muscles. Unless it is temporarily eased by anti-Parkinson's medications,rigidity id always present. However, it increases during movem...
