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.)

Originally Posted by RooJr

ok, I'm am going to buy for my brother who has PD. Can you suggest the dosage he should start on? Any other info on your experience would be appreciated.

Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

Everyone is different, so not really. The first thing you need to make sure of is that he isn't allergic to the bean that mucuna is made from! Read up on that and make sure it is ok for him to take mucuna first.

When we began taking mucuna, we started with 1.5 teaspoons of the powder mixed in half a small dixie cup of water. I think it's like sinemet: if you take too small of a dose, there won't be enough of a therapueutic benefit to help, so it's a waste, but of course you don't want to take too much, either.

We started off with a small amount and saw how that worked and have increased over time as it takes more to get the same benefit now. We're now up to a tablespoon for a dose, which is a lot to gag down. We've never had dyskenisias on mucuna, by the way, which is a huge plus. Maybe we've never taken enough to bring those on, as we're pretty careful, but I thought I would mention that.

The key is to go slowly and carefully note how he feels: he knows his body best and is also best able to tell how a given dose is affecting him. He might want to keep a log so he can easily refer back to what he wrote w/r/t what dose worked, how quickly, for how long, etc., and what dose didn't...and also share with his neuro, because he will need to let his neuro know he is taking mucuna, how much, how often, etc. and get his/her input. Some neuros are more supportive of therapies like this than others, of course.

Originally Posted by soccertese

just curious, what pharmaceutical pd drugs has your brother tried? has he tried plain old carbidopa/levodopa? if he has tried it and gets no benefit then he won't do any better on mucana. if he's looking to just start something for the first with l-dopa in it, it has always made more sense to me to start with c/l to get a baseline and then work in mucana, which can take awhile to get the right product and dosage. keep in mind that you have no guarantee that every batch of mucana is what it says it is.

Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

I'm going to take issue with this, ST, although I appreciate and/or agree with the vast majority of your posts (great minds think alike, eh?)

We don't get much benefit from sinemet, sometimes none at all, and this has been our reality for a long time. Maybe if we did, we wouldn't be so beholden to mucuna. But we DO get therapuetic benefit from mucuna, consistently, even though the bloom has been off the sinemet rose for quite awhile.

I'm not sure it's correct to predict that if someone doesn't benefit from sinemet they won't benefit from mucuna. That has not been true for us, at least. Mucuna works for us when sinemet doesn't, with food, when you're stuck, frozen, stiff, feeling like crap, etc. After hearing us talk about it for years, our neuro was curious enough about it to ask for the dose and brand we used

Originally Posted by lurkingforacure

I'm going to take issue with this, ST, although I appreciate and/or agree with the vast majority of your posts (great minds think alike, eh?)

We don't get much benefit from sinemet, sometimes none at all, and this has been our reality for a long time. Maybe if we did, we wouldn't be so beholden to mucuna. But we DO get therapuetic benefit from mucuna, consistently, even though the bloom has been off the sinemet rose for quite awhile.

I'm not sure it's correct to predict that if someone doesn't benefit from sinemet they won't benefit from mucuna. That has not been true for us, at least. Mucuna works for us when sinemet doesn't, with food, when you're stuck, frozen, stiff, feeling like crap, etc. After hearing us talk about it for years, our neuro was curious enough about it to ask for the dose and brand we used