Parkinson’s disease or PD for short is a degenerative disease that affects the central nervous system. It enables the person’s motor skills and speech. The motor skills include, walking, arm movements, leg movement, hand movement and head movement. There are other conditions that are similar and Parkinson’s is one of them, they are grouped together called movement disorders.

The person suffering from this condition may have tremors, some rigidity, and a slow down of the physical movements. The main symptoms are muscle contraction due to not enough of dopamine to the neurons that go to the brain. The disease makes the sufferer shake uncontrollably and the speech will begin to slur as the disease progresses. The condition is chronic, it is not one of those things were you will shake one day and not the other; it is an on going disease. Medications can help but scientists are working on a cure.

To work on a cure they must find the cause of the disease, whit it attacks some and not others. Is it genetic probably not. There are number of treatments and therapies out there that the suffer can control the symptoms.

Parkinson’s has been around for a very long time; it wasn’t until 1817 when the first case was documented. James Parkinson had written an essay titles An Essay on the Shaky Palsy. Parkinson was a doctor himself; he saw the symptoms of other people, which cause him to write the essay. It wasn’t until a short time later after the essay came out that Jean –Martin Charcot coined the phrase Parkinson’s Disease.

In the 1950’s the brain’s chemical makeup were being noted and research began on how to cure it and they came up with ways to control it but not to cure it. They created a treatment called L-Dopa. The medication went into doctors’ treatments and in 1968; the first signs of relief were seen.