Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative brain disorder that progresses slowly in most people. Most people's symptoms take years to develop, and they live for years with the disease.

In short, a person's brain slowly stops producing a neurotransmitter called dopamine. With less and less dopamine, a person has less and less ability to regulate their movements, body and emotions.

Parkinson's disease itself is not fatal. However, complications from the disease are serious; the Center for Disease Control rated complications from PD as the 14th top cause of death in the United States.

There is currently no cure for Parkinson's. Your doctor's goal will be to treat your symptoms to keep your quality of life as high as possible. That's why your gift to the National Parkinson Foundation goes directly to research that improves the daily lives of people with PD.

Normally, there are brain cells (neurons) in the human brain that produce dopamine. These neurons concentrate in a particular area of the brain, called the substantia nigra. Dopamine is a chemical that relays messages between the substantia nigra and other parts of the brain to control movements of the human body. Dopamine helps humans to have smooth, coordinated muscle movements. When approximately 60 to 80% of the dopamine-producing cells are damaged, and do not produce enough dopamine, the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease appear. This process of impairment of brain cells is called neurodegeneration.

The current theory (so-called Braak's hypothesis) is that the earliest signs of Parkinson's are found in the enteric nervous system, the medulla and in particular, the olfactory bulb, which controls your sense of smell. Under this theory, Parkinson's only progresses to the substantia nigra and cortex over the years. This theory is increasingly borne out by evidence that non-motor symptoms, such as a loss of sense of smell, hyposmia, sleep disorders and constipation may precede the motor features of the disease by several years. For this reason, researchers are increasingly focused on these "non-motor" symptoms to both detect PD as early as possible and to look for ways to stop its progression.

Read more from the original source:
What Is Parkinson's? | National Parkinson Foundation