Levodopa

Now, what if they give you a question about, um, a person, right? You're, you're told that this person is, um, um, you know, has missed like the last two...

You know, this person has a history of Parkinson's disease, and they missed the last two doses of their medication, right? And then you're told that, oh, that this person has been having like just severe bradykinesia and all these problems, right? Whenever you see something like this, what drug should you be thinking about, right? Think of levodopa carbidopa, right? Think of L-dopa carbidopa, right? Levodopa carbidopa, right? Remember, uh, these drugs are used to treat Parkinson's.

They're probably the most effective drugs for treating Parkinson's.

I mean, typically, you'll start off with a dopamine agonist like, you know, like, uh, bromocriptine, cabergoline, right? Or you can use, um, monoamino, monoamine oxidase B inhibitors like selegiline or rasagiline to boost your dopamine levels.

So what are the conventional treatments available for Parkinson's today? And this really hasn't changed in many years, decades even.

Levodopa and carbidopa to increase the amount of dopamine and or using dopamine agonist medications to increase dopamine or using things like COMT inhibitors or MAO-B inhibitors.

Okay, so what are the limitations of the conventional therapies for Parkinson's? The problem is these therapies have been focused on symptom management, not a cure, not going to the root causes, for example, the toxins that lead to Parkinson's.

Now, there are treatments, including surgery, where surgeons will implant deep brain stimulators, and that can improve motor symptoms.

And no, I would today in 2026, I would still, if I have someone with Parkinson's, I'm not opposed to starting levodopa.

The problem is we know from the studies that long-term years of levodopa, eventually it stops working.

But hopefully, if you're focused on the root causes, you ultimately will not need to be taking Levodopa.

And yes, it's also a myth.

So we thought, "Why don't we try a drug that affects the dopamine system?" [lip smack] And we used a drug that acts on dopamine receptors that is already out there, that's used in Parkinson's disease patients to treat them.

L-DOPA.

And we started with L-DOPA, levodopa, which is the drug you see in the film Awakenings, that's what happened, and it did nothing.

So we were really despondent and we thought, "Ah, maybe this was not gonna work." So we thought, before we completely l- lose hope with this, we'll try one other thing.

There's another drug which directly latches on to dopamine, a specific type of dopamine receptor, and that's called ropinirole.

How would you gonna make gla- how are you gonna make GABA? I sh- I should know.

It's from dop- L-DOPA, which I don't know what that is.

Neither do I.

Okay, but there's a biosyn- interesting biosynthetic pathway to make your GABA.

So what, you think people are going to say, well, how do we boost dopamine? Let's use an

L-Dopa, L-Taracine.

Do you think that's going to be the most common?

Yeah, I mean, that's not where my mind went, but yeah, it probably is, I think, how people would be thinking about this issue all the time.

I want to try to make this, I'm going to try to keep it as simple as I possibly can, because it really matters.

Levodopa, the medicine that many of us take, needs to get to your brain to work.

That's the goal.

But here's the catch.

So one of the big, big life changers for me was just recently, about three years ago, I was vegan for almost 20 years, and I started eating animal protein again, which I don't think anyone has to do, but I have learned just from my work, amino acids, they are the building blocks of neurotransmitters.

L-tyrosine is the amino acid that will turn into L-DOPA, which makes l-- dopamine.

Mm.

So if you don't have enough amino acids, you literally don't have the building blocks to make these i- very important neurotransmitters.