Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

I can add from a personal experience that we have used mucuna powder for years, as an add-on to sinemet. I have posted here about it before, so you can search the forum for my past posts about this.

Years on, we still take it, and the reasons are still pretty much the same:

1. it will take effect, reliably, which has become more of an issue as we're further into this illness, because sinemet doesn't always (and increasingly frequently, never) takes effect (read: waiting around, stuck and miserable, waiting for sinemet to kick in...waiting....waiting);

2. it will take effect even if we've eaten;

3. it will take effect within 15 minutes usually, which is great if you're frozen or just stuck;

4. it is cheap: a one pound bag of ground mucuna is around $25.00, including shipping, from Banyan Botanicals (no relationship to this company other than years as a mucuna customer!);

5. the bag will lasts a long time: our dose is a Tablespoon whenever we need it (mixed in a small Dixie cup with water...tastes horrible, so have something else ready to drink as soon as you take the mucuna, to get that taste out of your mouth. A few times we made milkshakes and put the mucuna in there, which was delicious and did mask the mucuna taste, but you lose a lot in the blender as it sticks to the sides and of course, one can't be drinking a milkshake two or three times every single day!). Our doc has been great about letting us set the mucuna schedule, since the alternative is to up the sinemet which none of us wants to do unless absolutely necessary.

I've never done the calculations, but a one pound bag of mucuna has a loooot of tablespoon-sized doses in it.

I don't know where we would be if we didn't have mucuna, it's been that helpful. I know we'd be taking a lot more sinemet, and although we have had to increase that over the years, I believe that increase has been a lot less because of the mucuna.

I hope this helps others. FWIW, we have tried almost everything out there, and nothing helped us except mucuna.

Also should know that mucuna hits quickly, but also wears off just as fast, so you could be left in a bad way unless you've planned accordingly (back-up mucuna, overlap mucuna with sinemet dose, be home and piled on the sofa when it wears off, etc.)