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Dear Listmembers, <fontfamily><param>Times New Roman</param><bigger> The relation between smoking and PD has been consistently found during many years. Some years ago I did ask my neuro whether he had any thoughts about that. He said it was his impression that PWP's had less tendency to get hooked on whatever stuff in the first place. So the causality in the relation might be just the other way round. People who have a tendecy to get PD don't have the same reaction as other people to dependecy-creating stuffs and because of that don't like them so much. This same question, how to explain the obvious negative relation between smoking and PD was during the last months of 1996 the subject of many mails on the list. At that time I was in a rather bad shape and talking it over with friends, we were convinced it couldn't do much harm to try a nicotine patch. So I bought one and tried it. The story about the results seems to me characteristic of PD. At first the results were marvelous ( I got my handwriting from my pre-Parkinson life back) but within a few days the results disappeared. So I stopped with the patches and after a week tried one again, but now without any result and later trials neither had any success. I told this on the next visit to my neuro. His comment was that Parkinson never stopped to produce riddles. He had witnessed in his practice a similar story. An other patient had told him her symptoms had astonishingly decreased and she credited that to flagyl, a gynaecological anti -infective, because the disappearence of Parkinson symptoms had been coningent on her using this. The neuro and the other doctor who had prescribed the drug consented she would not stop using it when it had finished its anti-infective task. But allas; soon the PD symptoms were back with the same strength. Just like I did with the patches, she too tried it later again, but without any result. Now that I am writing this I looked for flagyl in my meds book and it mentions neurological side effects as vertigo and ataxia and the same effects as disulfiram ( a med. that is used by alcoholics to prevent drinking ) . Now about smoking. An outcome of the neurophysiological research on the function of dopamine is that next to the role in movement, dopamine has yet another role. It has a function in being able to experience positive feelings. It makes that the rewards in life can be experienced as such. Feeling positively excited is correlated with a heightened level of dopamine in a certain part (the nucleus accumbens) in the brain. This is in accordance wth the frequency of depression in PWP's. Drugs, that can cause addiction do all bind to dopamine receptors and cause a heightening of the available dopamine. If that is not possible because dopamine is lacking these drugs don't give a kick at all. That might be an explanation for the fact that future PWP's don't smoke. Their disposal of dopamine has been low for many years before the disease is manifest. And if this is the whole story it makes no sense to start smoking to prevent Parkinson. Regards, Ida Kamphuis, Holland </bigger></fontfamily> -------------------------------------------------------------- Vriendelijke Groeten / Kind regards, Ida Kamphuis mailto: [log in to unmask]