Parkinson’s “Like” Symptoms
Original Post: Does anyone else have (and I use this word carefully), “Parkinson’s” type movements of their arms, where they move randomly in a twitching like movement and do not listen to you? I have this in my legs but not in my arms, mainly at night in bed.
Dr. Bruno’s Response: Involuntary limb movements, twitching and muscles jumping, is not uncommon in polio survivors and is a sign of overuse. The poliovirus did indeed damage the dopamine producing parts of the brain; we know a dopamine deficit is the cause of Parkinson's and is also what our research has shown to cause post-polio fatigue.
So why isn’t there a higher incidence of Parkinson's in polio survivors than the general population?
Back at the 1949 conference on polio, the man who discovered the brain activating system was asked to comment on why polio survivors who had encephalitis, could be in a coma as a result of damage to dopamine brain activating neurons but that polio survivors only incredibly rarely (and by rarely, I mean a handful of cases) had symptoms of Parkinson's. His disturbing conclusion was, "If the poliovirus did that much damage to dopamine producing neurons in the brain, individuals had no tremor because they did not survive."
Dr. Bruno’s Response: Having these sensations in legs at night is the norm for polio survivors. But any muscle can twitch and jump any time of the day. There are many kinds of tremors.
Some look like the Parkinson's "pill rolling" tremor in one or both hands where the thumb moved back-and-forth & the wrist turns when the hands are at rest.
Others have the hands shaking only when they are being used.
And sometimes the entire arm or both arms shake.
Look in the Index of the Encyclopedia of Polio and PPS for the topics of “Leg Movements in Sleep”