Originally Posted by boann

on the nature of bradykinesia without rigidity. i have very little rigidity, which i have concluded must refer to the involuntary tensing of muscles - and i once read somewhere that it is the simultaneous tensing of both the muscles that bend a certain joint and the muscles that straighten that joint that occurs in PD - no idea whether that is accurate.

i consider myself to be extremely fortunate to have escaped rigidity for this long, because it seems to me that that – and this gets to the heart of why I asked the question – is the most physically uncomfortable motor symptom of PD. All three cardinal symptoms can be disabling, but I can tell you from experience that while bradykinesia slowly robs you of abilities you once had, at least it does not cause pain or extreme discomfort.

This is the best way I have found of describing it to healthy people – you know how it feels when you have been out in the cold without gloves or pockets for some time, and then you try to do something like get change out of your change purse or even dollars out of your wallet while your fingers are still half frozen? Your fine motor coordination is impaired, right? Well, that is what bradykinesia is like, for me, minus the cold. No, there is no pain, just the failure of your fingers to adequately carry out the actions your brain is telling them to perform. (everyone can identify with pain – if you take that out of the equation, people look at you blankly when they try to understand the problem)

I can see how rigidity would impair movement, as well, but it would also be anywhere from physically uncomfortable to physically painful and/or unbearable.

I am trying to get a sense of why people start taking sinemet – and there are a million possible reasons ranging from “I don’t know anything about it and my symptoms are not so bad - I started taking it because my doctor said I should” to “I am fully aware of the dangers but for X reason I have decided to take the risk,” and I had the sense that “X reason” might more often be ultimately related to rigidity than to straight bradykinesia.

See, I am not a neuroscientist so I may be way off track, but the more I read the more convinced I become that not only is levodopa toxic (dyskinesias are clear evidence of that) but that it actually is toxic specifically to dopaminergic neurons, and I am concerned that it may be being prescribed for people who a) are not fully informed and therefore are not able to make an informed decision, and b) that some of those people might be able to get by without it – and that ultimately they would be better off for having done so.

My method, is, of course, impeccable, from a scientific perspective.