I hesitate to even start a thread that is heresy to many, many PD sufferers, many self proclaimed pharmacologists/biochemists on this forum and many of their physicians as well. It is all about a couple of PD drugs that can go very deadly if used inappropriately.
Please realize, if you can do so, that Carbidopa and/or Benserazide irreversibly bind to and permanently deactivate PLP, the active form of vitamin B6. Unfortunately for the uniformed, PLP is pretty important for your overall health since it is required for the function of at least 300 or more enzymes and proteins. Yes, quite a few. In other words, for those who aren’t self proclaimed pharmacologists/biochemists, PLP impacts almost every major system in the body in one way or another.
In plain English, try to use extreme caution in maxing out (as in 4-5-6 times a day using maximum doses) on either Carbidopa or Benserazide because you are inevitably going to create a host of peripheral health problems that will prove catastrophic in the end. It will all become a tangled web of ill health that has no apparent cause because you supposedly are doing the correct thing.
I apologize for calling into question PD dogma that always says: MORE Sinemet or Madopar is always better. It simply isn’t. The mortality statistics are troubling.
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sharoncrayn
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Without any references, you describe a possible problem with vitamin B6 and carbidopa/benserazide, as previously described by Marty Hinz [1]. But I find your only advice ("try to use extreme caution") too vague to be of much use.
PB, on the other hand, gives us a practical solution, in the form of B6 supplementation (N.B. the pyridoxal-5-phosphate form of B6 rather than the pyridoxine form).
[1] The Parkinson’s disease death rate: carbidopa and vitamin B6, Marty Hinz et al. 2014.
Regarding PB's advice to not take vitamin B6 and carbidopa/benserazide at the same time, here is a practical example of what can happen.
In a 2017 blog post, Prof. Frank Church related a personal experience of having carbidopa disabled by excess vitamin B6 (i.e. not the other way around, as sharoncrayn is concerned about).
At the linked webpage (about half way down the page, just before the picture of the 4 supplement labels) the section is titled: "Beware of taking a huge excess of vitamin B6 in the presence of carbidopa/levodopa, a cautionary tale".
C/L is mediocre at best for my husband. It barely takes the edge off. Thank you for this information. I will go off and do my home work. Does taking a B 6 supplement still help or is it forever at the mercy of C/L?
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