Hello,I am 48 years old male. I was diagnosed with PD about three years ago. My main symptoms is the right hand tremors. The tremors are slowly progressing. I don't have any other significant issues. My doctor noticed slowness on my right side when he diagnosed me. But it is not bothering me. I have two questions.
1. Recently I started to feel numbness in my right hand fingers. Before it used to happen once a while at night, but now for last couple of weeks, it is permanent numbness in my thumb and two fingers. It is a bit less during day as compared to the night. My question is that what can be done about it? Did anyone have same experience and what can be done about it. Is there a medication or vitamin?
I am taking levedopa/caridopa 100/25, two tablets three times but the medication do not help with tremors or numbness. But my doctor wants me to try it at least for 6-8 months.
2. My right hand tremors are progressing and L/C doesn't help. Propnanol does help but with progression of tremors it is not that effective. Artane did help a bit but there are terrible side effects such as vision and memory problems. What are you doing for your tremors? Please share.
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The numbness is potentially a sign of peripheral neuropathy, which can be due to vitamin B6 or B2 deficiency. I recommend getting your B6 & B2 levels checked. Read up on the interaction between vitamin B6 and levodopa medication here: healthunlocked.com/cure-par...
I would think you were a bit young for peripheral neuropathy, unless you're diabetic. But then again, youre kind of young for PD as well. I, too, got diagnosed at 44. You might have a pinched nerve in your neck or wrist, disrupting the transmission of the signal to your fingers. This may be from stiffness and rigidity caused by the PD. A visit to any chiropractor could possibly help reduce the subluxation, if thats what it is. ALso consider stretching and massage of the neck, shoulder, upper arm, wrist, fingers.
For the tremors increasing, I would consider increasing the carbidopa levadopa, forget the propanolol (that isnt the right drug for PD, more for esssential tremor, which is not the same thing) and hold off on the Artane due to the side effects. That might come in more handy a few years down the road if you get distonia or dyskineseia. Hopefully you wont though!
I can't comment on the tremor.But I do wonder about the advice on Levodopa for 6-8 month.
My understanding and experience is that you'll find out the effect of Levodopa in hours. Any change after 6 month would be most likely down to PD progression.
I would also recommend checking the B12 , B6 and magnesium levels and also check your calcium levels (if calcium is raised it can be detrimental to dopamine level in many ways)
i am exactly like you. I have confirmed Parkinson at sge 44 with a datscan now 2 years in with tremor as my main symptom with some sleep disturbances. I tried madopar 3x a day for 6 months and it did nothing I could notice for my tremors except made me feel sick. Maybe my poo and mood was a bit better. I also have some help from propranolol when needed although it effects my exercise performance. I also have occasional arm numbness when I sleep most noticeably when I have higher sugar/carbs.
The biggest thing that helps me is diet! I follow Laurie Mischleys vegan +fish diet and it’s helped. To be honest im getting reasonably sure sugars/carbs and inflammatory foods are a major cause. Try cutting them down, especially sugars/carbs.
Clearly exercise and stress management also help.
Today im managing with a strict diet, exercise, meditation (check muse and sensate), good sleep hygiene, hydration, occasional propranolol, low dose macuna , curcumin, a multivitamin and green tea. They are not gone but more manageable and im still working 100%. Im still struggling to keep carbs below 100g a day. I recommend the app cronometer to help track nutrition and carbs/sugar if you want to try the diet route. I noticed from the start food had a massive effect on symptoms and after 1 month of changing my diet I had a noticeable difference.
my doctors advice was to go back on madopar and increase it….but agreed a healthy diet and exercise are a good idea…
Thanks for sharing. I do a quite a bit of running, around 6 to 7 km for 3 to 4 days a week and yoga once a week. I do take a carb rich diet. I will try changing that and reduce sugar intake.
What brand and daily dosage of mucuna works for you ? Are there any notable interactions between mucuna and other medication or dietary supplements to avoid ?
now brand dopa macuna 15% 3 pills a day. I’ve been tood My dose is way too low. I noticed no interactions. But at least I don’t get nausea like with madopar.
I agree with the others on things to try, but I am questioning why the L/C isn't helping with your tremors. I am right hand tremor dominant as well, and the Sinemet helps control the tremors most definitely. Of course if I am anxious or excited, nothing really helps but generally I was told that if the L/C doesn't control the tremor to seek out another possible diagnoses.
I was wondering as well. But my neurologist and MDS diagnosed it as PD. My MDS is pretty confident with diagnosis and said that I don't need DatScan as he is sure that it is PD.
could it be a carpal tunnel issue? I thought I had carpal tunnel and had the surgery prior to my diagnosis and it helped my ulnar nerve but not my medial,
Thanks for sharing! My neurologist did EEG test for carpal tunnel syndrome before my PD diagnosis and he said that I do have it on my right side. But he said that it is not that serious. Did surgery help?
My journey started in 2017 with numbness in right hand then progressed to tremor on right side with official dx in 2020.Initially I was taking every supplement known to be of possible benefit and strength training and cardio switching every other day.
I have since reduced my stack to about 10% of what I was taking Initially due to no changes in symptoms, remaining stack includes C, D3, B12, Zinc, Mucuna and Lions Mane.
Everyone is different, but strength training gives me the most benefit over anything I have tried, but be aware that after working out your tremor will increase quite a bit until your body calmes down.
I also take propranolol when speaking in large groups, and have been Keto for 2+ years and am now at the weight I was wanting to achieve.
All I eat are protein and veggies, no breads or starches, main reason I started was weight loss. Definitely feel better and helps with stiffness. I have learned to control/ or eliminate stress, lifting helps me with that also.Keto has helped a little with tremor, but your mind, even with PD is still a powerful tool, breathing control also helps!
I have a similar situation. I've been diagnosed for 11 years or so, but my symptoms began in my right foot and slowly traveled up my leg to my arms (right side mostly). Very recently I began to experience mild tremors in both my hands (like you, thumb, fore, and middle fingers, and again, mostly on the right side). I've been on Artane for the entire time I've been diagnosed (200mg morning, 100mg evening), and while I assume it has side-effects, it's hard to say they're due to any specific medication (I'm also taking medications for type 2 diabetes and cholesterol ). At any rate, up till now, I feel the Artane has had a beneficial effect , despite the potential for dyskenesia. I also take a variety of vitamins, including B and D3, but I don't know what real benefits they have for Parkinson's symptoms. As you know, Parkinson's displays widely varying sets of symptoms in each patient, so you have to try a variety of medicinal responses.
Hi, I noticed C/L does not do much for my mild tremor either, and have read that is fairly common. Propranolol helps but if I'm nervous, excited, or over caffeinated it only does so much. I've been doing reading/research but haven't found anything too promising, at least where the side effects don't outweigh the benefit. I did find this article and was going to ask my nuero about it neurology.org/doi/10.1212/W.... Some of those vibratory therapies show promise I.e. Cue1 or the Dr. Tass/Stanford gloves.
I do have tremors and at night I take two 400 mg of L Theanine, two magnesium threonate and one ipigenin find that helps me but doesn’t completely eliminate the tremor however I seem to stay asleep longer. The L Theanine I use during the day sometimes when I feel so jittery.
I have been following the gloves by Taas for a while and waiting for them to finish their trials and make them available to us. In the meantime I got a power plate and I just started using it. I haven’t seen any improvement yet but I just started. There is also the infrared helmet and wand from the Australian company and those to seem to help a lot but they are not cheap🥴
It’s my experience in talking to hundreds of PD patients that neurologists will prescribe C/L to nearly every PD patient. Most of the time people don’t even know why they’re taking it and a lot of the time it does nothing for tremors. As someone else on this thread said, most of the time you know if it’s helping within hours or days. If it’s not helping you I would seriously consider discontinuing it. It’s only going to get harder to stop the longer you go.
Try some hand/arm exercises. I've had PD since 2016, and was prescribed C/L right away. Tremors are one of the principal symptoms of PD. Some people get them and some don't. I noticed finger twitching in my left hand early on, which frequently lead to tremors. I tried various hand exercises that I found on the web. One I have been doing daily since about 2018. The 2nd one I began in late 2023, and I also do daily, usually 3 reps in the morning. These exercises seem to delay finger twitching, which I believe would lead to tremors. I do both of these regimens with morning exercises. They take about 20-25 min to complete. I don't notice any influence of C/L, although C/L has an effect on other symptoms. One advantage of doing exercises over meds or OTC products is that you do not have to deal with side effects of the "med".
Some times when I am traveling or have my scheduled altered, I don't do them. They can be done without any weights or other exercise equipment, so you can do them almost anywhere. But, I always return to doing them when I get back on a regular schedule.
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