Q: My friend is 63 years old. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease two years ago. She started having tremors probably two years before her diagnosis, but they were being attributed to longtime use of a psychiatric medication that was prescribed for her bipolar disorder.
She is opting not to take any medications for Parkinson’s and has been trying to treat it holistically through diet, spirituality, Reiki and positive thoughts. She is on quite a few medications for her bipolar disorder and high blood pressure. I think she is anxious to add any more medications to the mix.
She gets painful cramps in her feet if she walks too much, and her hand tremors are quite noticeable and seem so debilitating. The specialist she sees wants her to take the medications, but my friend is determined to do it her way. I worry that by not taking the medication, she might be speeding up the damage that Parkinson’s can cause.
I also think she would feel better on the medications. I was wondering about your thoughts on this situation. – R.
D. A: It can be extremely difficult to determine whether a person’s symptoms, like tremors, are due to Parkinson’s disease or medications (called drug-induced parkinsonism), since the tremors can look exactly the same. The only way to be 100% sure is to see whether the symptoms go away when stopping the other medications, and it can take up to six months for the symptoms of drug-induced parkinsonism to go away.
However, movement-disorder experts c.
