People with Parkinson's can experience more than 40 different symptoms, including the distinctive shaking arms.
How they progress and the order in which they appear vary for each of the roughly 145,000 people in the UK who have this degenerative, neurological condition that has no cure. Just over 1% of people with a diagnosis of Parkinson's are under 50 years of age, and while the three main symptoms visibly affect physical movement, one invisible sign sometimes starts years before the others appear.
Raising awareness of the condition on World Parkinson's Day this Monday, April 11, Dr Beckie Port, head of research communications at Parkinson's UK, said: "Parkinson's is complex. There are over 40 symptoms which vary from freezing and rigidity to anxiety and sleeping problems. It affects everyone differently and no two people present with the same symptoms. Many people tell us, they experience symptoms related to their Parkinson's for a number of years before a formal diagnosis, but the dots were never connected."
