A neurologist shares a few tips about using Sinemet (carbidopa / levodopa).
Hello friends in youtube land today’s videos about how to use your sinemet or carbidopa levodopa which is often used for parkinson disease although sometimes for other things too i’m going to focus on parkinson disease today now sinemet is the american trade name for one producer of a combination drive you has carbidopa and levodopa those are the two chemicals
In their levodopa is the kind of the raw material that once it gets into your brain is turned into dopamine which is what’s missing in a certain area and that’s why you get parkinson disease so this is the raw material levodopa it gets into the the brain it’s absorbed through the intestine and then goes through the bloodstream gets into the brain fairly quickly
The carbidopa part is the part that prevents the levodopa part from making you want to throw up there’s also where there’s always two numbers with the cinema tour the carbidopa levodopa there’ll be like 25/100 or 5200 or something like that usually a one to four ratio or a one to ten ratio so one art one like the ten or twenty five milligrams of the carbidopa is
Usually enough to prevent the levodopa from making you want to throw up occasionally that’s the ratio isn’t quite right some people just might need more carbidopa and we used to prescribe just carbidopa pills for them until the drug companies in the united states anyway recently decided that the price should go up to the stratosphere or beyond and so now it’s
Just ridiculous enough enough of that but taking your sinemet properly is very important don’t you think doctor absolutely so a couple of things about the sinemet one obviously it’s very helpful if it’s taken regularly two it gets into the bloodstream fairly quickly so often when people start their day they’re going to want to take something right away but three
This is the important thing is the levodopa part is an amino acids and so if you take your sinemet with protein anything that has a lot of amino acids which is what makes up protein you’re kind of giving a bunch of competing molecules and so you’re not really absorbing all of the levodopa very efficiently so that leads to the recommendation and this is probably
Recommendation numero uno is take the medicine on an empty stomach very important empty stomach right yes yes yes yes yes so that means half an hour before food or 90 minutes after food and you’re pretty much in the clear that means in the morning it might be easy you might get up and take your your sinemet your karma don’t believe it oppa right away and then
In a half an hour you kind of have some black coffee which has no amino acids in it and or you might putter around you get some breakfast and by the time you have breakfast things you’re okay it’s in your system very often we use the medicine three times a day earlier in the course of the disease as a disease progresses very commonly we wind up having to go up
On the dose or more frequent on the dose in order to kind of get a steady state level in the blood more or less but at least early on we’re often using it three times a day second point about the carbidopa levodopa if you are taking it for parkinson disease and if you don’t have a lot of problem getting up overnight walking to the bathroom or doing whatever you
Might need to do in the night then taking it right before bedtime doesn’t make a lot of sense because when people are sleep they don’t have any tremor now some patients find it when they get up in the morning or if they have to get up to go to the bathroom overnight they have difficulties because their daytime medicine is worn and so sometimes we’ll prescribe more
Of a time-release form of the carbidopa levodopa to take at bedtime and that can often sort of help carry over to the next morning or carry over into the night so that if you’re getting up to the bathroom for example it’s easier and safer in asti it hasn’t really proven to be quite as wonderful as we had hoped so we had wanted a time release or sustained release
Formulation but the reality is that the vast majority of the time most of us treating parkinson disease are using regular carbidopa levodopa during the day the the sort of smooth level around the day hasn’t really panned out and the the regular stuff is really very predictable it’s much more predictable a quick review empty stomach 30 minutes before or 90 minutes
After pretty regular dosing times probably not useful before bedtime unless there’s a specific need overnight or getting started in the mornings is really difficult generic medicine seems to work just fine for most people a few other points very commonly when we’re sort of going up or down on the medicine we’ll go up by a half a tablet i’m speaking particularly of
The 25/100 tablets which are easily the most commonly used so they’re scored you can pop them in half and it works fine so i hope this is a brief review of how to use the cinnamon that you find useful does everyone agree of course i’m pretty sure that’s right okay you
Transcribed from video
Neurologist's tips for taking SINEMET By Andrew Reeves Neurology
