how long after starting Levodopa you see improvements?
Is it common not to feel any improvements after 12 days or should be concerned?
starting dose 12.5-50 twice a day for a week, then 3 times day for 3 days now 25/100 in the morning and 12.5/50 at noon ad evening
You are doing it right, slowly titrating up. Perhaps your doctor would like to reconsider the situation once you get to 3 x 100 mg /day.
There are many reasons why you may not be detecting an improvement:
- your symptoms are too low to be able to notice any improvement.
- you continue to produce natural dopamine.
- you are eating, especially protein, close to a dose, and this is out-competing the levodopa to get into the brain.
- it is common to get nausea when starting levodopa; this may hide the improvements gained by levodopa.
- you are a big person; you need a higher dose of levodopa to get to a given concentration of levodopa.
- there is a definite threshold at which the levodopa switches on, there is no gradual improvement.
- you don't have PD.
There is only one way I know of which REVERSES PD SYMPTOMS. IN other words the patient gets better!
Fast Walking is very good for PD patients. You may only be able to walk slowly at the beginning but if you walk every second day and slowly increase youe speed iuntil you are able to jog. Keep moving! That is the only way I know of getting better.
No Medication can possibly reverse the symptoms of PD. So why not start doing fast walking, as soon as possible, You may only manage to walk, at the beginning, but slowly, you can build it up, every second day, until you are running, or at least. walking fast. p
Fast walking reverses Pd symptoms. Don't tell yourself you can't do it, just do it, every second day and it will improve your symptoms and make you feel much better.
johnPM is correct of course, but ask your movement disorder dr what he typically sees. When I started out with mild symptoms in 2014, I did notice improvement right away when taking levodopa. And also fast walking is important too.
My husband started on low dose like you and he was told to stay on that for about 6 weeks when he went back to see the Neuro. He increased it then to 100 x 3 times a day and the difference was noticed but it wasn’t dramatic like some people have seen.
My husband also slowly titrated onto Levodopa in the form of Sinemet (so same proportions of carbidopa/levodopa). So as johntPM pointed out, it took weeks to reach the threshold where the dose becomes therapeutic. The first early hint it was helping is his ‘impending sense of doom’ lifted, then eventually we noticed that walking posture had improved.
To help or not help, a question of levadopa.
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