Drugs are the most basic medication suggested by your Parkinson’s disease specialist. A technique called Guided Imagery helps in handling stress, depression, and anxiety. The physiotherapist guides the patient in dealing with problems related to movement. Surgeries are advised in a few cases.
Drug Treatments for Parkinson’s:
Drugs are the first form of treatment given to a Parkinson’s disease patient. Symptoms show up when the production of a chemical called dopamine decreases. The drugs hence prescribed are meant to increase the production of dopamine and enable the transmission of messages normally. Your general physician or the nurse will be the best judge to set the drug dosage for you based on your symptoms and suffering.
Some of the drugs that are prescribed for the treatment are-
- Dopamine agonists
- COMT inhibitors
- MAO-B inhibitors
- Anticholinergics
- Levodopa
- Apomorphine
- Glutamate antagonist
Some of the new symptoms that you notice after having been put on medication could be the side effects.
Therapies and Parkinson’s Management:
Therapists are professionals who would have been exclusively trained for Parkinson’s disease treatment. They form an integral part of the comprehensive care team for Parkinson’s disease patients. Apart from the exercises and tips they give to help deal your problems you must also try and stay happy and calm.
The therapies involved for the treatment help fight your problems.
- Seeing a dietician
- Complementary therapies
- Speech and language therapy
- Physiotherapy
- Occupational therapy
Surgery and Future Treatment:
The physicians will advice you on the surgery as a next resort when the medications fail to act. All patients cannot go through the surgery. The surgery may improve the motor skills but will not stop the disease from getting into next stage or cure the disease. Medications might also be adviced simultaneously.
Lesioning techniques, Deep brain stimulation and other surgical treatments are adopted for Parkinson’s.
Future Treatments:
The remedy that the future treatments is looking for is to enhance the production of dopamine by the using drugs that would follow the function its meant to and to retain the remaining nerve cells from getting depleted.
Gene Therapy:
Gene therapy is another method that could be adopted to treat Parkinson’s. Here the normal genes are introduced into the patients to avoid any more nerve cell death, enable regeneration of nerve cells and also to check the existing unhealthy genes to attribute to the cell death. Here the genes are the substitute for the drugs. This therapy is used irrespective the causes including the genetic causes that must have led to Parkinson’s disease.
The therapy is believed to counteract best when the patient is still not devoid of nerve cells, is not on any drugs and has not had any side effects.
Stem cell Research:
The research team is working on replacing the weak nerve cells in place of dopamine-producing cells grown using the stem cells technique. Stem cells have a quality of being changed to skin, blood, brain and bone through a technique called differentiation. It will take few years before it canbe practically applied.