Q and A: about health and research

 One of the most unsettling facts about Parkinson’s disease is that the brain may begin deteriorating years, sometimes decades, before the first visible tremor appears. Long before a patient struggles to initiate movement or develops muscular rigidity, another symptom may quietly emerge: the loss of smell, known as anosmia. According to Robert Sapolsky , this early sensory change offers a fascinating and disturbing clue into how Parkinson’s disease may begin. The inability to smell is not merely an unrelated symptom; it may represent the earliest stage of a slow neurological invasion already underway inside the brain. Parkinson’s disease is fundamentally a movement disorder centered around a region deep in the brain called the substantia nigra. This structure relies heavily on dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in initiating smooth, coordinated movement. Dopamine itself is not dangerous, but its normal breakdown during cellular metabolism produces small amounts of reactive oxy...