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gary, that article means nothing to me. sorry. it's in rats and in 1 part of the experiment they compare mucana against l-dopa by itself, that proves nothing. plus you can just modify your dose/timing with sinemet, you can't just look at 1 or 2 factors. there's price, convienence, purity, etc.

as far as 40% l-dopa, your're taking 9tsps every 3 hrs? if 40% that would mean that you are taking more than 3tsps of l-dopa in every dose. the normal dose of l-dopa is 100mg every 3 hrs in admittedly a compressed pill.

here's my calculation, i picked whole wheat to estimate the weight/cup of a grain as a starting point.
1lb=3.3cups
48tsps in 1 cup
474grams in 1lb
1lb/3.3cups = .30lbs/cup x 48tsp/cup = .0063 lb/tsp x 473gram/lb = 3grams/tsp x .40grams l-dopa/gram = 1.2grams of l-dopa/tsp of mucana

so you are taking 3.6grams of l-dopa per dose? the normal dose for sinemet is 100mg l-dopa.

maybe my calculations are off but common sense would tell you that 40% l-dopa in mucana makes no sense. as far as evolution goes, that makes no sense for a plant, the reason the plant has l-dopa i assume is as a defense mechanism, animals avoid it because they get dizzy when they eat it but 40% would be overkill, natural selection would have selected against it.

i apologize if my calculations are off.