Quote:
Originally Posted by zanpar321
My understanding is that sinemet allows the L-dopa to get past the gut by using carbodopa. That's why the sinemet dose (which contains 100% L-dopa, plus carbodopa) is only 100mg and the plain 40% l-dopa amount is so much higher
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you need to do a little more research. carbidopa slows down the conversion of l-dopa to dopamine, l-dopa will pass thru the gut without carbidopa as will any similar amino acid. without the carbidopa almost all of the l-dopa would convert to dopamine outside the brain and dopamine doesn't pass the blood brain barrier.
before carbidopa was mixed with l-dopa as a treament and patients were given only L-DOPA, doses over 10grams were common since you had to overwhelm the enzymes that broke down the l-dopa so some would get to the brain. patients suffered severe nausea.
i was questioning how you create 40% mucana, 4% or 10% would make more sense. you'd just have too much dopamine getting created in your peripheral tissues.
http://parkinsons.about.com/od/treat...amine_meds.htm