Postural instability—the loss of automatic balance reflexes—does not respond to standard Parkinson’s medications and ranks among the disease’s most serious causes of falls and injuries.
Festination makes legs and movements accelerate involuntarily in Parkinson’s disease, creating dangerous unpredictability.
Turning in Parkinson’s requires coordinated activation of the basal ganglia, the brain region that loss of dopamine disrupts.
Freezing of gait—a sudden inability to move the feet—affects up to 60% of people with Parkinson’s disease and often worsens over time.
Dopamine loss in Parkinson’s breaks the automatic motor circuits that control smooth walking, forcing the body into characteristic shuffling steps.
Parkinson’s rigidity feels like your muscles are constantly tense and resisting movement, affecting your limbs, torso, and sometimes your face.
The slowness at the heart of Parkinson’s disease has a name, a cause, and a surprising number of ways to fight back against it.
Tremor is Parkinson’s most famous sign, yet up to a third of patients never shake at all. Here’s what that looks like.
The same adrenaline that races your heart in a tense moment can turn a barely-there Parkinson’s tremor into violent shaking.
Parkinson’s tremor stops during most sleep stages, returning within minutes of waking—a temporary but significant daily reprieve.