It’s almost impossible to go throughout your life without hearing about a loved one or a loved one of a friend going through Alzheimer’s Disease. Aside from early onset AD, it is pretty difficult to look at this disease and say that age has nothing to do with it. This, of course, is true because a lot of the machinery that goes wrong in this condition doesn’t just happen right away (in most cases). For instance, think about one of the most common culprits pointed out in Alzheimer’s which is Amyloid Beta. This protein is not one that just simply pops up in your cells when you are born. Amyloid beta is a protein that slowly builds up throughout our lives and it’s really a shot in the dark whether it will hit a point that will begin to exacerbate the issues that lead to Alzheimer’s.
Something that is concerning is the association between insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s Disease. I found in several articles that insulin plays an important role in neuromodulation within the neurons in our brains. Insulin has a role in regulating the amount of Amyloid Beta within our neurons. In people that have type II diabetes, they have a resistance to insulin, requiring more insulin to be circulated throughout their bodies to regulate their blood sugar. The concerning part of this is that in our brains we have an enzyme called Insulin Degrading Enzyme, IDE, which is responsible for the degradation of insulin within our cells. Secondarily, IDE is responsible for clearing out Amyloid Beta from our cells. In the case of a Type II diabetic, there is an overabundance of insulin to account for the resistance which results in competing for the activity of IDE leading to a long-term buildup of Amyloid beta without the ability to clear it up which IDE would do in bodies that have normal insulin capabilities. This finding points to a possibility that type II diabetics are at a much higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those that don’t have it.
The takeaway point from this is that if you do have type II diabetes you are not guaranteed to develop AD. The nice part about the human body is that if you treat it well, it will respond with performing at its best. If you are able to monitor your blood sugar regularly and keep your body from overusing insulin, there is a good chance you will be able to fight off the cognitive decline that comes with Alzheimer’s.
All of That…For This? My Capstone Experience
Concordia College requires all students take a capstone course before they graduate. The purpose of this course is to ensure that all students achieve the 5 goals of liberal learning laid out by the college. Neurochemistry counted as my capstone course and honestly, I feel like I got the easy way out. I know friends that have taken their capstone courses for things like writing and film that have to build a large portfolio to fulfill class requirements. While neurochemistry was informative and enjoyable, I never once felt challenged, but maybe I was just well-prepared for the course.
The first goal of liberal learning is a love of learning. While my love of learning has grown and changed since coming to Concordia, I feel comfortable making the assumption that many of us are here because of our love of learning in the first place. For almost everyone I know, we didn’t need a class to teach us how to love learning. Much of the material in Neurochemistry was self or peer taught so one could argue that you need your love of learning to be self-motivated enough to be successful in the course.
“Foundational skills and transferable intellectual capabilities” is the second goal of liberal learning. According to Concordia’s website, “Foundational skills allow a person to do something; intellectual capacities enable a person to know when to do something, how to adapt it, and when to do it in a new way.” While we certainly had to use these skills to critically read a paper each week and communicate its findings, I don’t think Neurochemistry taught us these skills.
Goal three is to “understand and integrate multiple perspectives.” Again, we used these skills extensively in Neurochemistry when making connections between what we were learning and other courses we had taken. However, we do this in almost every course, the integration of information is not unique to Neurochemistry.
Goal four, “examined cultural, ethical, and spiritual well-being” is addressed in many of my classes but Neurochemistry was one of the first science classes that it had been stressed in. Each week, we had a different topic that usually related to some sort of neurological disorder. Every Friday, was spent discussing the implications of the paper and topic and how that might change everyone, not just scientists. While many of my classes have been discussion based, Neurochemistry was the first “science” course to have such a strong emphasis on this kind of discussion.
Finally goal five is “responsible participation in local, national, and global communities.” This is really the only goal that is unique to Neurochemistry. As part of the course, we were required to do a community action project that would ideally benefit the local community. My group had great ideas but didn’t really see our project come to fruition because we were unable to make the right contacts in the community. Aside from the roadblocks my group faced, the course did a decent job of demonstrating the importance of this kind of community engagement.
Concordia has recently shifted to requiring PEAK experiences instead of a capstone. A blog on the website states,
“Beginning in 2017, first-year students will be required to complete two college-approved integrated learning experiences before graduation. These are called Pivotal Experiences in Applied Knowledge (PEAK) and may be integrated into program-specific or interdisciplinary courses or they may be designed like an independent study.”
Having already participated in projects that have received PEAK “approval” for future years, I think shifting to this model will be beneficial. I’m not saying that I thought Neurochemistry wasn’t a good use of my time; I am just not convinced that the capstone-like experiences in Neurochemistry were unique to this course. And perhaps that is why Concordia is switching to the PEAK model. From the time we are first-year students, we are already participating in courses designed to fill the five goals of liberal learning so a designated capstone course doesn’t feel all that different.
Should We Restrict Athletes From Competing if They’ve Had Multiple Concussions?
Concussion awareness is on the rise among high school and college sports. More and more athletes are being required to take baseline tests such as the ImPACT. Coaches and trainers are paying more attention to when their athletes take a big hit and should be checked out.
These are all great things, but many schools and teams are also starting to put a limit on the number of concussions an athlete can sustain before they are restricted from competing. For safety reasons, this seems extremely logical. Researchers suspect that sustaining multiple concussions can negatively impact cognitive function later in life. However, as an athlete myself, it is very difficult to imagine someone else telling me that I am no longer able to play my sport.
Before I get too far into this debate, it’s important to know what a concussion is and how it affects the brain. A concussion occurs when there is an impact or jolt that causes the brain the collide into the walls of the skull. This can cause the brain to swell or bleed, possibly leading to serious cognitive complications. The brain also experiences a shift in ionic flux, resulting in an increased demand for the body to produce ATP, the body’s energy currency. ATP is used to transport ions in and out of cells. When ionic levels are thrown off balance, the body has to work harder than normal to restore them back to normal. This can put additional stress on the brain as it tries to keep up ATP production with the demands of the injury. Researchers think this may be why you experience headaches and other symptoms of concussions.
In contact sports, a major concern is that athletes are exposed to repetitive head trauma. Repeated blows to the head can have serious long term consequences. For example, many retired NFL players have developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disorder induced by repeated head trauma. The associated cognitive decline is a gradual process. Thus, symptoms develop long after the injuries. Many of those affected have turned to substance abuse and suicide as a result. Therefore, this is a serious issue for athletes especially of contact sports, and I do agree it is important that we do everything we can to protect them.
Many of my non-athlete friends, and even my athlete friends who have never sustained a concussion have said they agree with the standards being implemented to restrict athletes from competing after a certain number of sustained concussions. They say it’s not worth the risk to keep playing. I completely agree. However, it is hard to imagine someone else telling me what I can and cannot do. As an athlete, I have developed a type of self-awareness, knowing my body’s limits and how much I can handle. For someone else to tell me I am unable to continue playing my sport would be incredibly difficult to agree and come to terms with.
My point here is: while it is important that schools monitor the health of the athlete’s, I think their own thoughts and perspectives should be taken into account. After all, they are the ones who may lose something they are passionate about, not the people who are restricting them.
Neurochemistry: The Cherry on Top of My Concordia Experience
I would like to formally thank the people that pushed me towards taking Neurochemistry as my capstone experience to be the cherry on top of my entire Concordia experience. As I worked through my science major and minors during my time at Concordia, I did not feel that spark from the exploratory side that science brings until I found neuroscience. Now, I’m not going to discount that lovely hit-you-in-the-face-you’re-a-big-kid-now feeling that I received from my year in organic chemistry but neuroscience has been a huge driving force that I have found pushing me further in my science career.
Through neurochemistry, I have found that there are many ways to find an answer to the questions we all have. My favorite method has been developed through Neurochemistry and that is simply self-exploration. Many of us forget that at any moment, we are able to answer almost any question with the use technology that we all keep within arm’s reach at all time. Before my final two years at Concordia, I just didn’t use technology to the potential I could and I still feel like I am headed in the right direction. Another thing that I discovered through exploring the field of neuroscience was the constant state of curiosity I carry for the brain. If you stop and think about it, we are only able to provide a solid explanation of the anatomy brain, but beyond that, there is an absolute vastness that revolves around millions of cells randomly passing an electric charge to signal from one cell to the other. Externally, one simple firing could be the process of us recalling our homework we were supposed to have finished a long time ago (like blog posts perhaps).
Regardless of what our brains are doing, it is amazing to me that each of these areas we are constantly looking at could be capable of performing one specific task throughout our lives. On the other hand, one area such as the thalamus could have numerous tasks which are absolutely mind-blowing because each of us expects each one of the systems in our brains to work at such an elevated level when in reality it seems like a miracle that they work at all. This, of course, brings me to the rant of how wild it is that one small chemical imbalance within our brains leads to so many different pathologies. One could be something mild that one may never notice throughout their life, whereas the other could be something socially crippling like schizophrenia leading to an altered sense of reality. At the end of the day, I am happy I had the opportunity to learn about the many different disorders we studied in Neurochemistry. I felt like it was a good BREWing experience because we didn’t look at the disorders at face value. Many of them involved a deeper look between the lines to find out where the research was coming from, what cultures might be more at risk, and several other contributing factors. That in itself is a really fun skill to have now that I take pride in is my ability to be more analytical when I read anything now.
My ever-growing curiosity about the brain and its workings has pointed me further down the path of neuroscience. Thankfully I can contribute a great deal of this curiosity to Neurochemistry because I was encouraged to ask critical questions about each of the disorders and I had to challenge myself to learn about my curiosities and share them with my classmates. That was a really cool aspect of the class was that we had to take it upon ourselves to dig up the answers to questions brought up in class to teach one another making it important to put forth a quality effort into researching our topics.
My Neurochemistry Capstone Experience
Neurochemistry wasn’t exactly my first choice for a capstone course (just hearing the name sounds scary and intimidating), however I had heard great things about the course so I decided to take a chance even with my very minimal background in Neuroscience and a slight distaste for Chemistry. But now as I reflect upon my capstone experience in the Neurochemistry course I took this semester, I am incredibly thankful for the information I learned and how this information will impact my viewpoints going forward.
In many ways I think my experience in Neurochemistry this semester fulfilled the Concordia College goals for liberal learning and will help me become more responsibly engaged in the world. Prior to this class, I did have some knowledge about the definitions of basic disorders of the brain, like Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Interestingly, I haven’t had much personal experience or known someone with a lot of these medical conditions that we discussed throughout the semester, so learning the pathways and epigenetic mechanisms that play a role in disorders like ALS, addiction, and Parkinson’s disease took my understanding of the brain to another level. At the same time, learning about these conditions was frustrating because there is so much information and research available, but in most cases there isn’t a cure and the treatments seemed generalized for everyone on a trial and error basis. This knowledge and appreciation for the neurochemical imbalances that can take place in the brain will definitely help me in my future career as a health professional and how I approach my life going forward.
A very important aspect of this Neurochemistry capstone was developing our skills at transferring our understanding of science to others. This occurred in several ways: writing blog posts about topics from the week, leading discussions about a certain disorder of the brain, doing more in-depth research on our topic of the week and sharing that in both written and oral form to our classmates, and finally completing our semester long community action project to inform the community about the neurochemical basis and social basis of different brain topics. In conjunction with many other sciences courses I have taken at Concordia, I have taken away that making sure that science is understandable and available to the general public extremely relevant and important for producing change. Science informs policy, it impacts our everyday choices, it influences our health, and much, much more. In order to have the biggest worldly impact through science, communicating its value to others who don’t have a background or as large of an appreciation for science is critical. Through this Neurochemistry course, I have gained more confidence in reading, researching, clearly communicating the scientific articles that I read.
One of the most fulfilling parts of this class was carrying out the community action project. My group decided to focus the topic of mental health on eating disorders. We found this a particularly relevant topic to communicate to our peers, coaches, and student athletes. It was a great way to learn more about a topic we hadn’t discussed in class and be able to educate others on the importance of understanding the science behind eating disorders and also how they impact us and others around us. I think this was another great example of how we used our knowledge gained in the Neurochemistry course to try to influence the affairs of the world, specifically getting a discussion going on campus about the prevalence of eating disorders in our age group and among student athletes.
In many ways, my favorite part of the class was our weekly Friday discussion days. This time was a great way to get together, try to dissect the science we had just read earlier in the week, try to come up with answers to questions (but mostly come up with more questions), and hear different perspectives on topics. I think this was a great way to meet the goal of creating interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and making connections with other areas of knowledge. I definitely brought a more biological and physiological perspective to the table, since my primary scientific interests lay there. But it was also great to hear and learn more from people who had more interest or a better background in the chemistry, genetics, and psychological aspects of our discussions.
Overall, my education at Concordia has instilled a love for learning. As I prepare to graduate this weekend I have thought several times about how four years here has been enough, but also how it hasn’t. I am so thankful for everything that I have learned, but I know there are so many things I still don’t know about Biology, Chemistry, the arts, Religion and that I truly and deeply want to learn about it all! In this way, my liberal arts education has taught me that there are always more things, and very interesting things to learn in many different disciplines and that every opportunity to learn and ask questions should be taken.
Autism: Could It Really Be? a Zinc Deficiency?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that autism is present in 1 in 68 children and is almost four times more prevalent in males than females. Autism speaks classifies autism as “…a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences.” This shows that autism is more often referred to as a spectrum disorder, which implies that there are no exact set symptoms that an individual will exhibit.
There are several ways that autism can be caused in utero. First, is simply by genetic mutations which is seen in almost every disease in the human species. However, since there has been a higher prevalence in recent years of autism it is believed that there are more factors than just genetics. One of the risk factors is a prenatal viral infection of the mother. Prenatal influenza, rubella, and cytomegalovirus infections show a strong correlation with the development of autism. Another possible cause is prenatal stress. It has been shown that there is higher prevalence of autism when a mother is stressed while pregnant. Finally, there is the strong correlation between prevalence of autism and the presence of certain toxins. The most important of these toxins are valproic acid and thalidomide. Both of these have demonstrated an increased risk of fetus’ developing autism.
Now before I continue I think it is important to note that autism arises during development in utero and CANNOT BE CAUSED BY VACCINES! Get your child vaccinated so we don’t have any outbreaks occur!
Please excuse my digression. However, the most interesting potential cause for autism is a zinc deficiency. Zinc homeostasis is essential for proper brain development and function. Zinc is also the second most abundant trace element in the body and is involved in many bodily and neuronal processes. It’s most important function in the human body is its presence in presynaptic vesicles on neurons. It is important to note that according to Andreas Grabrucker “…in a recent study…the incidence rate of zinc-deficiency in the infant-group aged 0-3-year-old was estimated 43.5% in male and 52.5% in female.” This shows a very close association between zinc-deficiency and autism. To make the link even closer a zinc deficiency is known to cause learning and memory impairments, behavioral problems, and can cause seizures. This is important because there are many autistic patients that also have epilepsy.
Now I know this seems kind of scary because how are you supposed to know if you or your child is getting enough zinc? Well I can’t help with this problem, but I can help you to know what you should be eating to ensure proper zinc levels. The top ten foods that contain the highest zinc levels are as follows: Oysters, beef and lamb, wheat germ, spinach, pumpkin and squash seeds, cashews, cocoa powder, pork and chicken, beans, and mushrooms. So you see, it does not matter your diet preference we can all consume the perfect amount of zinc. By simply doing this it can lower the chance of having an autistic child.
Everyday I’m BREWing
Coming out of high school we all know how tough it is to decide what you want to do with your life or where you want to go. Being from Mesa, Arizona I only knew one thing…I wanted to leave there and see another part of the country. I visited schools in Iowa, Colorado, and in Minnesota and after 10 plus visits I finally settled at Concordia. I mean after all I was kind of a legacy at this school. My aunt is in the athletic hall of fame for winning a national championship here and my great grandfather is former Concordia College president Joseph Knutson (his statue is in the Knutson Campus Center). The decision was one of the best I have made in my life.
The first reason it was the best choice is that I got to continue to play the sport I love, but being able to put education first was key. I played golf at this college for four years, amassing 23 top-25s and finishing 3rd all-time in career scoring average. Most importantly though I was privileged enough to become captain the past two years and to be able to show the other men how to make the right choices. This allowed me to make an imprint on my fellow teammates and shape how they think about the world. It is important to stress the ability to instill a hard work ethic, the same work ethic that I learned in Chemistry 127-128 in my freshman year. Golf provided me an outlet and allowed me to grow as a man and a kid trying to become a responsibly engaged in the world.
The education at Concordia is grueling and the teachers are not shy about pushing you to exceed your expectations. They push you to set higher goals and expand your horizons. Dr. Mach of my Neurochemistry class has done this just as much as anyone. In her class we looked at 9 neurodegenerative diseases the plague the world at this time and each week I found myself becoming more engaged in the material and thirsting for more knowledge on the topics. In life, there is no easy road and I am constantly going to keep driving forward and the thirst for knowledge that Concordia has instilled in me will make that happen.
The well-rounded curriculum at Concordia College has allowed me to be a science major but also take classes in global studies, English, and humanities while also focusing on my major. This allows me to make connections between fields of study that I would not have had the ability to do at a large university. It has become easier for me to see problems from many different angles and has allowed me to see the world from a new lens. All this allows me to become a more responsible citizen in a global community.
Finally, we get to my capstone experience, the peak of the mountain, the cherry on top of the sundae. Taking Neurochemistry for any science major is a must. The ability to have a free flowing classroom where we all participate and are not lectured at for an hour provides an experience where we all learn together. We research was interests us and are not confined to a bubble of material that the professor assigns. Dr. Mach gave all of us the freedom to follow our passion and this was especially exemplified in the blog posts and the community action project. The blog posts only requirement was that they had to focus on the week’s topic and provide some science. This allowed me to write a biography one week and provide research another. These gave me the chance to provide my own learning into the topic.
The community action project was another highlight of my undergraduate education. Logan, Hannah, and I decided to focus on ALS a debilitating neuro disease that has no cure and is a death sentence. Based on Dr. Mach’s instructions whatever we did just had to be focused on ALS and this gave us the freedom to act as ambassadors to the ALS association and try and promote the ALS walk in Fargo, ND on Saturday August 19 at 10:00am. We contacted radio station executives in an effort to get air time to discuss the walk and are still in negotiations, but this experience allowed us to leave the bubble on campus and promote change on a larger scale. To experience the real world and try to make a difference. Hopefully we are successful in the end.
My time at Concordia has come and gone and I am thankful for the opportunity to attend a college that allowed me to grow as a man. A place where the professors push you to excellence, but at the same time provide you with the support needed. A place where I was able to follow my passion of playing golf and also provide me with a rigorous education. However, now it is time to enter the real world and I know wherever I go, Concordia has provided me with a launch pad into the future.
Am I Smarter for Going to a Fancy Pants School, or Did I Blow a Bunch of Money for Nothing?
Waiting till the last moment to reflect on my college education, in true Gus McCarthy fashion, I think my time spent at Concordia was worth the extra buck.
I’ve been asked to reflect on the mission of Concordia College by highlighting my experience with the five goals.
- Instill a love for learning
- Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
- Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and intercultural perspectives and their connections
- Cultivate an ethical, physical, cultural, and spiritual self understanding
- Encourage responsible participation in the world
The guy on the left here isn’t the dumbest person in the bunch, but he also has the worst study skills imaginable. He can understand subject matter, but transferring it is impossible, and he has no idea who he is.I didn’t have many life experiences prior to Concordia. I had invested heavily in my sports career, and I got good but not great grades. Everything ended up changing when I got to Concordia.
Over the next few years I had quite the set of life experiences. I transformed my entire academic self. I changed what I wanted to do with my life, then changed it again. I failed a class. Passed a really hard chemistry class. Travelled Europe. Lost my sister to suicide (that was her on the left with me). I worked as a medic. I got into medical school. And I fell in love.
I can firmly say that I wouldn’t have been able to do all these things, and deal with the ups and downs without Concordia.
From day one they taught me that enthusiastic learning is the easiest learning. Staying engaged in classes ends up making them more fun. It’s a bit corny (shameless cobber pun), but they really do instill a love for learning. These days I’m excited to hear a lecture about under water basket weaving, and I find myself hopping around on PubMed for interesting articles. I’m not really sure how you can instill a love for learning, but Concordia did it.
One of the things I struggled with early on in my academic career was transferring knowledge between disciplines. Particularly between biology and chemistry. For the longest time I thought the two subjects were completely distinct, but after my time in undergraduate, I have come to find that they blend more than I ever even imagined. My professors taught me how to do that. They always told me to look for the connections in class. If you spent a few minutes, you could find them.
During my Freshman spring semester, I was in a bit of a limbo. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do. For some reason I thought a philosophy class sounded fun, so I enrolled in one. That semester I spent a number of hours simply thinking about what would make me happy. I still don’t think I understand myself completely, but getting outside of my science comfort zone pushed me to find myself.
Finally, reflecting on the idea of Becoming Responsibly Engaged in the World (BREW), I think even though the BREWing idea was thrown into our curriculum at any given moment, it’s important to see just how powerful we can be as students. I used to think that I could change the world with a blog or Facebook status, but now I know that real action happens out in the community. Concordia taught me that I can’t sit back and let others take care of everything. It’s up to students and others like myself to stay engaged with our respective communities and shape our reality. This is critically important for scientists like myself today, as we begin to take a more active role in policy making.
My time at Concordia was well worth the extra money. Even though I don’t technically have a control for my college experiment, I really think that I am a better person because of the goals put forth by both the college and my Capstone course.
Hopefully this guy will be a little more prepared for what the world has to throw at him.
Autism Spectrum Disorder: It’s Zinc! No Wait, It’s Antibiotics! No, It’s….
Autism Spectrum Disorder, or as I will be using very frequently, ASD, is a very hot topic disorder these days because no two people are affected the same way. From this, we are blessed with the difficult task of trying to explain their symptoms, treat them, and help them assimilate into society as the rest of us all try to do. So how exactly is this possible? Fantastic question, I’m glad you asked because I have a slight understanding of how ASD works.
From working together to come up with an idea in class, we arrived upon an agreement that Zinc deficiencies play a significant role in development in utero (Shocking… I know…) We found that zinc is a cofactor in protein synthesis, cell division, and immunity for both mother and baby. I would go out on a limb and say that it is a big shock that we all aren’t slightly on the autism spectrum because it just does not seem like proper levels are stressed to pregnant mothers. After reading the labels on several assorted brands of prenatal vitamins, I was presently surprised to find that an acceptable amount of zinc is included in these supplements. Unfortunately, not all mothers are planning on having a child, so I can go to imagine that many future mothers are not properly preparing their bodies for a little bundle of joy.
The next hot topic issue we found was the treatment of mothers for infections during pregnancy and how it is such a double edge sword. On one hand, it is ridiculous to leave any infection untreated (if out of control) but at the same time, antibiotics are not necessarily the healthiest item to be passed along to a fetus. It has been found that children whose mothers were treated with antibiotics during pregnancy were more likely to develop symptoms resembling ASD. This connection was discovered through many of these children having a gut microbiome dysbiosis. Although it is a long shot to draw a strong correlation between the two, one should take these facts as a warning story before jumping to antibiotic use if it isn’t necessary.
*Insert Clever Title Regarding Parkinson’s Disease*
Parkinson’s disease is an interesting disorder that has many factors that contribute to its complexity. As most of us know, Parkinson’s is a well-publicized disease as there have been a few famous people that have brought a great deal of attention to raise awareness and funding to research it. Michael J. Fox has been a headliner in the battle to find a cure for Parkinson’s because he was diagnosed with it at such a young age. To his advantage, he has the ability to use his acting background to bring attention to the dire need of further research for this condition because there is not a cure.
One of the aspects of Parkinson’s that makes it so complex is the pathway in which it plays inhibits. The pathway that is affected is the motor movement pathway. This entire route of signaling involves several areas of the brain in which there is planning of the movement in the prefrontal cortex, the information from the prefrontal cortex is then used to activate the basal ganglia which is an enormous player in this pathway because it requires a great deal of dopamine to activate the next steps in the pathway. Much research supports the basal ganglia as being the problem location of the brain that has Parkinson’s because the neuronal cells require a great deal of dopamine to continue the signaling of the pathway. This essentially highlights one of the overarching issues of Parkinson’s disease because the main problem within the signaling cascade between neurons arises from an overall lack of Dopamine to use to excite the next cells down the line.
From the disorder of the motor controlling pathway, the common symptoms found can either be resting tremors of outer limbs to begin. Many patients come with a common symptom of a pill rolling tremor that looks exactly as it sounds. To give an example, think of when you were young and had to take a pill that looked way too big. So, what did you do? Most of us would imagine rolling it around between our thumb and index finger. This exact action is what a Parkinson’s patient would likely present with either in early or late stages of the disorder. Additionally, it is important to recognize that Parkinson’s is a developing disorder that begins in the external parts of our bodies as it may begin in our feet as well as our hands and slowly work its way around in the body. Also, coming from Parkinson’s as a symptom that contrasts the resting tremors is the inability to generate movements in various limbs. Another example that can be commonly seen with the failure to generate movement can be found with these patients being unable to make the first movements when it comes to walking. This too arises from the disorder of the motor movement generating area of our brains and it results from the motor cortex being unable to be stimulated.
