10 warning signs of Parkinson's disease

About 5 million people are affected by Parkinson's disease in the world, more than 200,000 in France. This figure is expected to rise sharply in the years to come. This degenerative neurological disease destroys neurons in the brain and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to control body movements, a revealing symptom of this disease when it is already present. Some warning signs of Parkinson's disease can alert and lead to consultation. What are they ?

What is Parkinson's disease?

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological disease that affects certain brain cells, more specifically the dopaminergic neurons whose role is to produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter essential for controlling body movements.

Parkinson's disease, which most often appears just before the age of sixty, evolves slowly and above all differently from one patient to another. The causes of this disease are still unknown today, but specialists take heredity and environmental factors very seriously.

Little by little, Parkinson's disease destroys these types of neurons and the first symptoms appear, in particular motor symptoms, as soon as more than half of these cells are affected. Akinesia (slowness in performing certain body movements), muscle stiffness, and tremors at rest are the main symptoms, which particularly affect only one side of the body, and which lead to the diagnosis of this disease.

Fatigue, apathy, motor disorders also accompany the main symptoms of Parkinson's disease once it is installed and evolves.

Parkinson's disease is progressive and there is no treatment to cure it. However, depending on the progress of the disease and the people affected, medication, the objective of which is to compensate for the lack of dopamine or to block its destruction, physical and speech therapy rehabilitation, surgical interventions consisting in implanting electrodes in the brain, make it possible to improve the life of the patients without however stopping the evolution of this disease.

The 10 warning signs of Parkinson's disease

Before the characteristic symptoms of Parkinson's disease appear and confirm its presence, several warning signs may suggest this neurodegenerative disease and lead to consulting a doctor as soon as possible, before the pronounced advance in the destruction of the affected neurons. by this disease.

The 10 warning signs of Parkinson's disease that should alert you:

1. the fact of being often subject to fatigue;
2. feel difficulty concentrating;
3. being unable to perform as many tasks of daily living as before;
4. a quarter of patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease experienced a phase of depression as a warning sign;
5. the fact that the writing is getting smaller and smaller, a sign called "micrography". A warning sign little perceived by relatives or patients with Parkinson's disease themselves, as the France Parkinson association points out;
6. a less and less audible voice;
7. behavioral disorders during REM sleep reported by the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). These disorders take the form of sudden and violent movements at the time of the dream period;
8. digestive disorders such as constipation or nausea;
9. increasingly bent posture;
10. the urgent need to urinate.