Perilous Parkinson's
- EECN Team, With Love
- Dec 17, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
PREFACE
Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder, and as it progresses, the ability to move becomes increasingly more severely impaired. PD is extremely widespread, as the Parkinson's Foundation estimates that approximately 10 million people in the world currently have the disease. PD is a very prevalent condition that threatens seniors worldwide, and it is important to educate ourselves on what it is and how it affects the lives of so many people.
THE NUMBERS
The Parkinson's Foundation revealed another astonishing fact in its statistics report: in the US alone, there are about 60,000 new cases diagnosed annually. This mind-boggling number shows just how many people are influenced by this disease, and the amount of cases is unfortunately prospected to continually skyrocket. Parkinson's Foundation's Parkinson's Prevalence Project analyzes PD cases across North America, and this report predicted that by the year 2030, there will be 1.3 million cases in the US. Parkinson's is an urgent, relevant issue that affects so many people in not just the US, but around the entire world
SO WHAT IS PARKINSON'S?
Parkinson's, as mentioned earlier, is a neurodegenerative disorder. This means that the symptoms brought about by the disease are caused by the communication of neurons in the brain slowly degrading, usually attributed to older age. In the case of PD, scientists state that lewy bodies- which have a protein called alpha-synuclein within them- form within neurons, blocking the electric signals from delivering their message effectively or at all. A significant portion of PD research has been focused on the role of alpha-synuclein in the symptoms of the disease. The miscommunication between the neural network result in various symptoms.
SYMPTOMS
Symptoms can vary from patient to patient, but there are a few overarching symptoms of PD. Some of the most common are difficulty moving, smaller range of motion, and shaking. The Mayo Clinic also states that the "loss of automatic movements" as well as "speech changes" can be attributed to PD. Specific symptoms may be treatable, but to this day, there still exists no cure for Parkinson's. It is disheartening to see just how scary the impact of Parkinson's is, as well as how many lives it impacts each day. However, we can have hope in the future of medicinal research and what it will do to improve the lives of PD patients everywhere. Although there is no cure for PD, there are still treatment methods that have been shown to be relatively effective, but still producing slightly different results among patients, of course.
THANK YOU FOR READING
I have listed the sources I referenced for this article as well as resources you can visit for more information, so if you would like to learn more about PD, make sure to check them out. If you have any questions or would like to talk more about PD, feel free to reach out to info.elderlyembrace@gmail.com, and we can have a conversation about Parkinson's.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Sources I referenced for this article:
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