that's absolutely not true. C/L induced involuntary movements occur in 60% of patients eventually, are dose dependent and often mild but included in the statistics but it's usually years after starting the drug and if they occur in the future will occur whether you started taking the drug immediately or waited 5 years.
when l-dopa first was tested i think everyone who took it had involuntary movements but it was so incredibly expensive it was only given to very advanced patients.
l-dopa is a naturally occurring aminio acid that has been in use since around 1970 and is the most widely used drug by parkinson's patients. if C/L caused that much involuntary movements you'd see a lot more people exhibiting those movements just walking down the street in any large city but you don't.
all side affects encountered during a clinical trial have to be listed for a drug. if you read the package insert for C/L, you'll see how many patients experienced which side affects and you'll see that for some side affects those receiving the placebo had the same occurrences as those who received the treatment but they have to be listed.
page 25 gives the % of side affect occurrences in a clinical trial with sinemet over 748 patients, dyskinesias=involuntary movements. no side affect occurred in more than 16% of the patients.
they don't show the occurrences in the control group receiving no sinemet but i assume some of those had side affects from the placebo.
http://www.slideshare.net/Chrysopigi...strategic-plan
any side affects you have will quickly disappear after you stop taking C/L, it has a half life of about 1.5 hrs., so i wouldn't be scared just trying it.
you can check out the website PATIENTSLIKEME and see what side affects patients have on different pd drugs.
http://www.patientslikeme.com/condit...nson-s-disease
i've been taking C/L for at least 6 years, no involuntary movements and no major side affects. take about 800mg/day.
gotta remember l-dopa is a naturally occurring amino acid. if you read the potential side affects of many amino acid supplements you wouldn't take them. kind of exaggerating.