Through unfailing commitment—and a little luck—a woman named Helen Garvy stumbled upon a possible solution buried in a particular strain of cannabis, reports Van Winkle’s.
It began in the early ’90s. Robert, Helen’s husband, felt his hand begin to tremble slightly, evidence of the die-off of the neurons in his midbrain responsible for producing dopamine, the neurotransmitter essential for voluntary motion.
This telltale degeneration can first manifest as tremors, slowness of movement, gait problems and/or rigidity, but the underlying causes of cell death are poorly understood, despite the fact that descriptions of the symptoms date back to Egyptian papyrus, Ayruvedic medical treatises and the writings of Galen. Modern dopamine replacement medicine often helps extend the golden years, but the medication is nearly as poorly-understood as the disease’s origin.
