A possible cure for Parkinson disease?!

Comments

• aviin

  January 2015

  There is the potential link between aluminum and Alzheimer's Disease to consider.  I've read a few things that seem to suggest that the aluminum/Alzheimer's link might have been premature, but it has not been entirely ruled out (to my knowledge).
  
• fairchild

  January 2015

  L-Dopa can cross the brain-blood barrier and is used to treat Parkinson's symptoms. The problem is that it's an unarrestable neurodegenerative disorder and not just a matter of dopamine deficiency. There's alpha-synuclein build-up and the dopaminergic neurons continue to die until even dopamine supplementation loses any efficacy. We still don't know exactly what causes the cell death, so the state of the art is that we're basically just triaging until there's nothing more we can do.
• ThatOneGuy1224

  January 2015

  Aviin, I know the potential damage aluminum can cause, thus the main reason I have suggested a means to get rid of it. I propose modified citric acid, it is known to eat away aluminum, we have to find a way for to not damage cells, especially the neurons and axons in the brain. So chemical modding. 
  
  L-Dopa has horrid side effects, and people build up a tolerance decently fast. Dopamine however has fewer side effects, and has a rather slow tolerance rate. Correct me if I am wrong, but isnt Parkinson's disease caused by the inability to produce dopamine, instead of being unable to absorb it? 
• Cassox

  January 2015

  Ok. Dopamine can't cross the blood brain barrier but L-dopa, a precursor can. The problem is that it's converted to dopamine rapidly in the periphery (enhanced by coadministration with B6). Parkinsons is treated with a two part med: Levidopa/Carbidopa. Levidopa IS L-Dopa. Carbidopa is a subtance which prevents L-dopa from being converted to dopamine. Carbidopa can't pass the BBB though so all of the L-Dopa is converted to Dopamine within the CNS.
  
  In terms of side effects of L-Dopa vs. Dopamine... it's a very similar thing. List of medication side effects are very route specific. Anything being listed re: dopamine is about the side effects of peripheral administration. Were you to instead administer it centrally... it would in fact have more central side effects than L-dopa. I don't believe L-dopa exerts any action in and of itself. All psychoative effects are related to what it does after conversion to dopamine.
• Cassox

  January 2015

  If you'd like to play around with this at home, L-dopa is easy to purchase and from what I've read ECGC functions like carbidopa. I had a hefty pseudo-schizophrenia episode from just such a mix. Not much fun really.
• Cassox

  January 2015

  So anyways, there's a frontal lobe region asociated with executive functions which has been linked to Schizophrenia when high levels of dopamine are present. Thus, when a person takes Sinemet (Levadopa/carbidopa) a possible side effect is schizophrenia like symptoms. When someone takes typical antipsycotics... parkinsonian symptoms are common.

  One more weird thing... if you inhibit dopamine even men start lactating. At some point there was some post regarding feeding the starving children somewhere... I guess this could a Grinder past time assuming you feed them from your own body.
• DirectorX

  February 2015

  Lol @Cassox
  Dude, it's grinder soylent