[lou_lou]

Dopamine - A Sample Neurotransmitter

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One of the neurotransmitters playing a major role in addiction is dopamine. Many of the concepts that apply to dopamine apply to other neurotransmitters as well.
As a chemical messenger, dopamine is similar to adrenaline. Dopamine affects brain processes that control movement, emotional response, and ability to experience pleasure and pain.

Dopamine -continued link

http://www.utexas.edu/research/asrec/dopamine.html

Regulation of dopamine plays a crucial role in our mental and physical health. Neurons containing the neurotransmitter dopamine are clustered in the midbrain in an area called the substantia nigra . In Parkinson's disease, the dopamine- transmitting neurons in this area die. As a result, the brains of people with Parkinson's disease contain almost no dopamine. To help relieve their symptoms, we give these people L-DOPA, a drug that can be converted in the brain to dopamine.


Drugs can stimulate or fail to stimulate dopamine receptors

[ol'cs]

You are setting yourself up for one of those 3000 post threads. This is a tremendously simple yet complicated question. Yes dopamine does get replaced by dopa, But why isn't L-dopa the best feel-good drug there is, and why don't things like cocaine, which are so called dopamine releaser's cause euphoria in the PWP. This question needs the input of a seasoned neurologist, and it only brings more questions to the table

[lou_lou]

dearest cs,

I have more questions -then the doctors have answers...
yet this one seems to be just what it states -drugs in balance -
have correct effects on the human body -

drugs that are syntheticlly/ -made in the pharmacy are made imperfect therefore the drugs give us drug addictions and withdrawls like
the drug addict -it seems to have made all PD patients,
watch - AWAKENINGS : AGAIN?
I did and what I saw wasnt the disease, but the reaction of over stimulation of the nervous system - Robert DeNiro's portrayal brought me to tears and the realization -that the drugs in the begining were given at levels the good doctor was only guessing -hypothesizing
and he did this with a pharmacist preparing the correct dosages -

and what I saw was amazing -because it has happened to so many of us,
the drug that gave them some quality of life,
after some time - took that quality of life back,
dear cs -because of your great knowledge & education in chemistry, all I can see from many of your posts - that this may be your very same synopsis -
it is perfectly fine to tell the truth of what the drugs have done, and where they have fallen short...
that is we (PD paients) take the drugs -
we are the living labratory -who can vocalize it...
and therefore we need to voice it now or forever -hold our knowlegde to ourselves.
love
tena

the PD we suffer from today is rampant - it has been a fact -that during the GDNF clinical trial -all were helped, and all were harmed by the removming of the
protein glia serums/ that healed the brain and gave life back to the brain by neurogeneration

ie: amgen -
it took a theif like amgen to remove a not quite perfected way to heal the brain -yet none the less -it did no harm until bigpharma removed it from the patients.
the doctors code is -do no harm?

and dear cs - I have no more answers to give - just a thousand more questions.

[lou_lou]

please watch -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJCjUsgq7o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvWTc...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AzXE...eature=related

the real oliver sacks: speaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQPI0BIkOkE

dr oliver sacks speaks of PD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nnLT...eature=related