[Aurornis]

> But everyone else? You're voluntarily breaking yours. I need medication to feel what you could feel naturally if you stopped training your brain that effort gets you nowhere.

> I was born with this dysfunction. You're choosing it.

This blog pushes the idea of “dopamine deficiency” as a real scientific concept, but it’s not an actual medical diagnosis (unless you have Parkinson’s disease). To be fair, the linked blog post implies that a doctor gave them this idea, which can happen when you go to a doctor who feels like they’re doing patients a favor by telling them they have a “chemical imbalance” or a deficiency of a neurotransmitter to alleviate objections for taking medication.

The other post also implies that a brain scan was used as part of the diagnosis process, so this is a good place to point out that brain scans are not diagnostic for ADHD. There have been a few notable quack doctors who tried to push fMRI misinterpretations as specialty ADHD diagnostic tools such as Dr. Amen, but these aren’t actually validated by anything nor have they even been shown to be repeatable.

As always: When someone starts talking about dopamine as the chemical that explains everything in life or makes claims to have a deficiency of it, realize that they’re talking about dopamine as a metaphor rather than actual science. Unfortunately people start taking the dopamine metaphor too literally and believe that any lack of motivation is equivalent to a physical lack of dopamine, which is not true.

[FollowingTheDao]

>This blog pushes the idea of “dopamine deficiency” as a real scientific concept, but it’s not an actual medical diagnosis (unless you have Parkinson’s disease).

This needs to be corrected. Parkinson is caused by too much dopamine which after being metabolized creates oxidative stress that kills the dopamine neuron. Which is why l-dopa fails to cure the disorder and actually makes the patent worse in the long run.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34184261/

I will say one can see dopamine disorders in someone behavior and correlate them to genetics and nutrition if we cared.

[Aurornis]

> This needs to be corrected. Parkinson is caused by too much dopamine which after being metabolized creates oxidative stress that kills the dopamine neuron

This is not correct. The cause of Parkinson's is not fully understood and a simple Google search or visit to any medical website or Wikipedia could explain that.

The paper you linked is an editorial (it's in the title) commentary on another artificial experiment in mice that were genetically altered to have a hyperactive pathway for generating dopamine. This is not something found in nature nor do they claim it's something found in humans.

They're simply demonstrating that if they geneticially alter mice to overexpress dopamine and induce excess dopaminergic damage in the process, they can produce outcomes that kind of look like Parkinson's

Claiming that this editorial has explained Parkinson's disease is completely wrong.

> I will say one can see dopamine disorders in someone behavior and correlate them to genetics and nutrition if we cared.

Claiming that "if we cared" we'd see that everything is caused by dopamine, genetics, and nutrition is the current generation of pseudoscience that drives blog posts like this one. I don't know when people started reducing everything to dopamine, but it's neither accurate nor helpful. The number of people who have depression or learned behavioral problems who try to explain it away as "dopamine disorder" is becoming a problem.

[FollowingTheDao]

> The cause of Parkinson's is not fully understood and a simple Google search

Did you ask me if that is all I did? I picked that becasue it is easier for the layperson to understand. I apologize for being on the cutting edge of Parkinson's research. Maybe they have not cured it yet becasue science is so resistant to new paradigms.

Yes, low dopamine causes the symptoms of Parkinson's (PD), but what is causing the low dopamine is the oxidative stress destroying the Dopamine neurons. You could have searched more about it before you reacted so strongly, but here you go:

Rethinking Parkinson's disease: could dopamine reduction therapy have clinical utility? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11319508/

and

Toxic interactions between dopamine, α-synuclein, monoamine oxidase, and genes in mitochondria of Parkinson's disease

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38196001/

"Excessive dopamine in experimental models modifies proteins in the mitochondrial electron transport chain and inhibits the function. α-Synuclein and familiar Parkinson's disease-related gene products modify the expression and activity of monoamine oxidase. "

and

Does levodopa slow or hasten the rate of progression of Parkinson's disease?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16222436/

and

Damage to dopaminergic neurons by oxidative stress in Parkinson's disease (Review) https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/ijmm.2018.340...

Besides, if PD was caused by low Dopamine, why does l-dopa, which resolves symptoms, only work temporarily and makes the condition worse? The logical way to explain this is that Dopamine is the problem. The clinical study failed to demonstrate any evidence of levodopa worsening early PD. However, the beta-CIT SPECT substudy indicates the opposite effect, namely that levodopa causes a more rapid decline in the integrity of the dopamine transporter located in the nigrostriatal nerve terminals in the striatum."

> Claiming that "if we cared" we'd see that everything is caused by dopamine,

I did not say that. But dopamine has a lot to do with learned behaviors so thanks.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215462...

Your response seems reactionary and filled with your own biases.

[jahsome]

With all respect, and constructively: your response is extremely passive aggressive and undermines any authority you may have by making you seem insecure and small.

You seem well informed, but it's difficult to take anyone so needlessly snarky and defensive seriously.

[ak_builds]

You caught it right. I had behavioural issues since childhood.

[FollowingTheDao]

I'm sorry for you. Science is slow to change on this and it is so obvious what is actually happening. I feel many cases of Parkinson's could be prevented, and maybe even reversed, with better nutritional tracking and studies.