Discuss Parkinson's disease and criticize South African Parkinson's Association Phamplet

In 1817 , a London physician named James Parkinson wrote the first information of Parkinson's disease in his essay of the shaking palsy , and now in just under 200 years it has become the second most common neurogenic disorder affecting approximately 1% of the world population over 50 years old. However very few people know what Parkinson's is and its influence to the everyday life of a suffer. So in this essay critically evaluate the Parkinson association of South Africa pamphlet by covering the most common questions asked by potential suffers or their families in order to determine what effects Parkinson's disease has on a sufferer.

Before I begin to evaluating the pamphlet it would be helpful to familiarize ourselves with what Parkinson disease is, how it is brought about and who is mainly affected. Parkinson's disease is a progressive, neurological disorder, occurring when nerve cells do not work properly in a particular area of the brain, called the substantia nigra, which is a pigmented nucleus in the brain stem ( Alexander, Fawcett & Runciman ,2000) .The

Placement of an electrode into the brain. The head...

English: Immunohistochemistry for alpha-synuclein ...

Illustration of the Parkinson disease by Sir Willi...

substantia nigra forms part of the basal ganglia which consists of several clusters of cell bodies receiving impulses from different parts of the cerebral cortex. These nerve cells produce and store dopamine and acetylcholine, the chemical messenger which co-ordinates the body's movements, the chemical messengers work in balance to transmit messages between nerve cells and muscles enabling a person to perform a range of co-coordinated movements. In people with Parkinson's this balance is upset because some of the dopamine-producing cells are lost resulting in stiffness in the muscles, slowness of movement, difficulty when starting movements and, in some people, tremor. Other significant symptoms are bradykinesia, involuntary movement and many other disabling effects (Scott 2002). This project from

The symptoms of Parkinson's do...