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Why early diagnosis is key to treatment. Dr. Leon Meytin explains.&nbsp;

Why early diagnosis is key to Parkinson's treatment.

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Do genetics play a role in Parkinson's?

I'm Jocelyn memento with neurologist and movement disorder specialist. Dr leon Maiden with the Harvard health care, Iron neuroscience institute, Chase family movement disorders center. Nearly a million people in the United States are living with Parkinson's disease. Dr mania. How challenging is it to diagnose Parkinson's? So it can be very challenging because a lot of the symptoms, especially early on in Parkinson's mimic other conditions, but in the right hands, knowing what you're looking for with a good history and good physical exam. It's actually it's fairly easy to diagnose. What do you refer to their tremors. So sometimes people have tremors, but interestingly enough, you actually don't need to have tremors to be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, some of the symptoms that we do see our balance impairment, stooped posture changes in voice change in handwriting. And certainly you can see tremor as well. Why is it so important to diagnose this early? So the sooner we can diagnose it, the sooner we can start treatment and the sooner we can implement all the things that we have available to us to help Parkinson's patients. What is the treatment. So medication wise, there are several different medications that we use. Most of the medications out. There are are basically medications to boost dopamine, but on top of medications we have a lot of non medication options and that's where our integrative program comes into play. So we incorporate a lot of exercise. We're newly gonna be incorporating ping pong into our program as well as nutrition acupuncture and things like that. And let's let's also talk about genetics. Does genetics play a role? Absolutely. So genetics does play a role, although probably a small role. There is a subset of patients with Parkinson's that have a genetic variant that increase their likelihood of having Parkinson's. But just because you have that genetic variant does not necessarily mean you will definitely don't want to have Parkinson's. Doctor Matan. Thank you for more information. Go to Harvard Healthcare dot org.

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